kids in the dark
by Cordelia Rose
Summary: They've been assigned to work on a project together. Connor seems woefully oblivious to Markus's feelings. Markus would like very much for his brain to work around Connor. Human & highschool AU, RK1K.
1. here we are at the end of the road

i'm back on my shit

* * *

The moment the word 'partners' leaves their teacher's mouth, North twists in her seat - directly in front of his own - and grins at him brilliantly. When Miss Harding continues with, "I'll be deciding the pairs," North's smile falls off her face and she turns back around with a scowl. There's absolutely no way that he'll be with North, not after their dramatic reenactment of To Kill a Mockingbird last year which resulted in a minor - minor! - explosion, the entire school being evacuated, and all three emergency services turning up in the parking lot. Carl had seen the funny side to it all, at least, even if the bomb squad hadn't.

Miss Harding draws everyone's attention by clapping her hands. "If your surname begins with A-L, stay where you are. If your surname begins M-Z, move to your partner, please. Capiche?"

The class responds with a collective chorus of 'capiche's. For all her assigned partners bullshittery, as North would put it, their English teacher is fun and teaches them what they need to know, so she's well-liked by the student body. And it's not just her - none of the staff will allow North and himself to work together now, apart from their Chemistry teacher. Given their track record, he's probably the one who should be trying to keep them apart the most, come to think of it.

The students with A-L surnames are clearing away their clutter to make room on their desks - apart from North - and those with M-Z surnames are gathering their supplies into transportable piles - apart from him.

"Markus," Miss Harding calls, grabbing his attention. "You'll be working with Connor." She moves onto the next student, but her voice fades into the background.

Oh, fuck. Oh no. No, no, no.

It's not that he doesn't like Connor. It's the opposite.

He's had a crush on him since they were thirteen, which makes it three and a half years now. They've never actually interacted, as such, and Markus doesn't know if Connor is aware of him past 'somebody I see in the corner of my eye every so often in English class'. It's the only class they share - Connor is in honours and advanced placement for everything he takes, and Markus is either in regular where Connor is in honours, or in honours where Connor is takes advanced placement. AP English grants him three hours a week to spend in Connor's general vicinity, at least.

He would be ecstatic but -

Well.

North turns round in her chair again, wide-eyed. "Dude!" she mouths, looking excited. Then she frowns. "Why aren't you freaking out?" she whispers, tipping her chair back precariously onto two legs to get closer to him.

Markus struggles to find the words, mainly because he knows North will be pissed that he didn't tell her about the incident immediately. "Connor knows about Leo," he finally replies, at an even lower volume.

North's chair clatters back to four legs. The teacher, and half their classmates, glare at her. As usual, she's completely unfazed, and proceeds to scrape her chair round so she can face Markus. Miss Harding looks askance at her but carries on reading out the last few partners. "Markus, what the fuck," she hisses, looking infuriated already. "Why didn't you fucking tell me when this shit happened?"

"First off, stop swearing-"

"Go fuck yourself!"

"And secondly, because I was...embarrassed, I guess." Markus throws his hands up in mercy, and accidentally flips a pencil backwards off the desk. It hits the wall and snaps in two, which is a waste of a good pencil, but at least breaks the tension and makes North giggle. Her eyes softened anyway as soon as he spoke, clearly understanding his situation.

"You don't have to be embarrassed about it," she says sincerely. Her nail polish is starting to flake off, dark red covering her nails in irregular patches, but her hands are as warm and delicate as ever as they curl around his own, fingers squeezing gently. "It's not your fault that your brother is a piece of total shit."

"It's still - okay, so, you remember when he went missing for, like, three weeks?"

North nods. "The police found him in a condemned building."

"Yeah, so, uh, they called us and said he was in a holding cell, they found him on the system from his fingerprints? We had to go and pick him up, and sort out bail and stuff."

"He got community service, yeah? I remember."

"Yeah. Perks of being rich." Markus waggles his eyebrows at her; North suppresses a smirk. "So, anyway, we turned up and the receptionist was like, 'Go in and find Lieutenant Anderson,' so in we go and almost straight away I see Connor, just, like, sitting at one of the desks."

North slaps a hand on the desk. Their classmates barely react this time. "Had he been arrested?" Her eyes flicker over to the boy in question, who's actually paying attention to their teacher and whatever vital information she's giving them about the project.

"No - well, I thought so, too, right? Then I saw he had his textbook on the desk, he was, like, doing homework? Then Carl says he can see Lieutenant Anderson's desk - he points to it, and it's directly opposite where Connor is!"

"Shit." North leans in closer, her blonde hair obscuring half her face for a moment until she scoops it out of the way impatiently. "Oh, shit! Connor's last name is Anderson!"

Markus gestures wildly and uselessly, glad she's making the same connections he did. "Right! So we go over, and Connor looks up, and he goes, 'Oh, if you're looking for Lieutenant Anderson, he'll be right back," and Carl says thank you and asks him about his homework-"

"And you were having a major gay panic at this time, correct?"

"You have never said anything so true, North, oh my God, I genuinely thought I was going to die! Then this man appears, and asks if we're here for Leo, and Carl says yes, and then the guy starts looking on his desk for the file and Connor, like, picks it up and hands it over and says casually, 'red ice', so obviously he knows everything, and then as we walk away I look back and he's, like, looking at me? Really intensely? Then he just...nods, and fucking goes back to his homework like my entire world didn't just flip on its axis!"

"Quite the trip," North comments. She sounds impressed. "But - like, he won't be judging you, dude, like, he sees that shit every day. His dad's a cop. He's, like, cool with it."

"It's still embarrassing!" Markus implores her to understand. "Anyway, I don't even know if that's his dad."

"Oh, no, it is, I remember seeing a picture of Connor and a dog on his desk now," North says absently.

Markus gapes. "Nor - North, what the fuck, when were you at the fucking police station-"

"Remember when I got arrested for scratching 'dickface' into that asshole's car? Lieutenant Anderson was there, he told them not to put me in a holding cell because I was too young and made somebody make me coffee while I waited at his desk for my parents."

"And you didn't - you didn't think to mention this?"

"Okay, well," North narrows her eyes. Not good. "You're not in any position to lecture about fucking secrets, and, and, I told you I was arrested and a nice cop stopped me from getting shoved in jail, I just didn't say who the nice cop was. Because I forgot, I was kind of preoccupied with being fucking arrested."

"How could you forget?"

"Because, Markus, and I know you're going to find this, just, like, fucking out-of-this-world crazy, not all of us are obsessed with Connor."

She's won. They both know she's won. "Fuck you," Markus mumbles, and shoves his stuff into a haphazard pile when he notices other people standing up. "I have to go now."

"Have fun sucking diiiiiiiiiiiick," North not-quite-whispers.

"I will," Markus hisses back, and flounces off so he can at least pretend he has some dignity left. He slows his strut to a normal walk when he gets a few paces away from Connor's desk. His first - fuck, second - impression on the guy doesn't need to be any worse than it already inevitably will be.

"Hi," Markus announces lamely. Connor looks up from his notes, a pen clutched horizontally between his lips, kind of like a dog with its favourite toy but infinitely cuter. It's also - well, Markus has to banish some impure thoughts.

Connor removes the pen, taps it nervously against the paper. "My name is Connor," he says, in his stupid raspy-smooth voice.

"I know. Markus. I mean - I know your name. And mine is Markus."

Connor smiles slightly. "I know." He glances between Markus and the chair next to him when he doesn't move. "Are you going to sit down?"

"Yes," Markus says a little too fast, and sits down so quickly his spine creaks. "I am sat." Oh, it's even worse than he thought.

"Like a cat on a mat," Connor replies instantly. Markus stares at him in surprise. "What kind of project do you want to do?"

"I - uh, I wasn't listening," Markus confesses sheepishly.

Connor's lips twitch upwards again. "I saw you talking to your friend, so I thought you might not be." It doesn't sound like a reprimand from him, not like it would from Josh or Simon - Markus winces to think about lunchtime, when North will undoubtedly tell them what he just told her, and also give a wildly exaggerated version of events in the class. "I came up with a few ideas while Miss Harding was talking - here." He pushes his notebook towards Markus, open to a double-page spread.

Markus blinks. The left half is full of meticulous neat notes in almost perfect handwriting, certain parts highlighted or underlined. His own notes can be described as scribbles at best and the illegible scrawlings of a toddler at worst. The right half is a little messier, but still neater than anything Markus produces; and wow, there are a lot of ideas.

It's not that Markus is stupid, but his talents lie more in art. He likes English too, likes how you can change the entire meaning of a sentence by adding or removing one word, or how you can create a chasm between meanings using synonyms. He likes to analyse books and see the meaning behind the words, but he's a dweller. He sits, and ponders, and lets his mind wander and draw conclusions.

Connor, on the other hand, clearly needs no great length of time to shoot out ideas. Markus skims down the list quickly - the theme of the project seems to be symbolism, which he can do easily, except oh wait his brain has a meltdown whenever Connor says anything goddamnit. The ideas are solid - a couple of Shakespeare's works are noted as examples for each, some American classics, some British too, some titles that he's never heard of. "I like - I like the idea of doing feminism over the years. So, female characters? And comparing them to each other, and saying how times have changed. Or how they haven't?"

Connor beams. "Great. That was probably my favourite. Like, Shakespeare wise, I immediately think of Lady Macbeth, and then more recently, Curly's wife? But we'd also need to like, balance it. Because Steinbeck purposely wrote the story in that way as, like, social commentary, and in some Shakespeare tragedies women are given bigger roles."

"Do you - do you have any paper? I think better if I can get my thoughts out. And I'll probably forget everything, too."

"Sure." Connor retrieves a jotter pad and neatly tears two pages out for him, and then grabs him a pen too, from a case that seems to be entirely full of black ballpoints.

Markus immediately draws an uneven oval in the centre of one page, and scribbles inside it, Feminism over the years, in his cramped handwriting. He spiders several legs out from it and jots down everything they've said. Connor is watching him with fascination. "I know it's not very neat," he says, suddenly very aware of the contrast between their notes.

"I like it," Connor says quietly. "I mean - I like that you can think like that. I - I can't. I'd like to." Connor sounds sadder than Markus would have expected over something as simple as English notes - it runs deeper, then, this is something Connor struggles with on a much more personal and meaningful level.

"If it means anything, I really like your notes. I wish I could be that neat and organised," Markus offers.

After a second, Connor's furrowed expression transforms into a gentle smile. "Thank you, Markus. You're very kind. Ah - anyway, the project. We should try to find some more examples of female characters. Maybe all the way back to classical times too? And something modern, too.

Markus adds the ideas to his mind map untidily, not missing how Connor's eyes dart after his every movement.

When the lesson finishes forty-five minutes later, Markus has filled three more pages of mindmaps, ranging from characters to quotes to additional themes to cultural references, and Connor asks politely if he can use his phone to take a picture of them to copy out himself.

"Hey, we should exchange numbers," Markus blurts, and then hastens to explain that he's not actually a creep, "To meet up outside school, I mean? To get the project done?"

"Good idea." Connor closes his camera and with a few deft taps opens a new contact. "Here, put your number in, I'll text you later today?"

"Sounds good!" His usually graceful and delicate fingers have suddenly become fumbling and clumsy, and he makes more than a few typos as he tries to enter his name and number. He puts his surname in too, just in case, and double-checks his number. "Here. That, uh. Should be it." The bell rings. "See you later!"

Before Connor can react he rushes back towards North's desk, kicking her in the back of the leg when he reaches her. "I'm coming, you dickbag," she hisses, and turns back to her partner, Traci. "I'll text you tonight, then?"

"Sounds good," Traci agrees, and shoots Markus a quick smile. "Bye, guys."

North scoops up her own stuff and they exit the classroom rapidly, heading to their lockers. "He's going to text me later and we're going to arrange a time to hang out after school to work on the project. He's going to keep saying intelligent and clever stuff, and I'm going to look like a bitch and a fool."

"Well," North flings her locker open more aggressively than she has to. "You always look like a bitch and a fool, so we're fine on that front."

"I'm serious, North, he's so amazing and I just turn into a pile of mush!"

"Why do I have the feeling that you're talking about Connor?" Simon asks tiredly from behind them. Josh trails behind him, looking vaguely concussed.

"PE?" North asks in return, and gets two nods. "Rough. Let's go eat our body weights in mashed potatoes to make up for it."

"There's a reason I love you," Josh mumbles, and slings his arms around North's shoulders as they walk. "What's this about Connor, anyway?"

"We've been paired together for an English project," Markus explains, reluctantly allowing North to tug him into a sideways embrace as they head towards the cafeteria. "My brain doesn't work around him, he's going to think I'm a massive idiot and want nothing to do with me."

"If he thinks that, he's a fucking moron and I will punch him in the dick," Simon says, quite seriously, and surprises him into laughing.

"Just be yourself around him," Josh advises. "I mean - what can go wrong with that?"

"Don't jinx it," Markus moans. "I have enough bad karma already."

North perks up. "That's true. Hey, remember when you nearly impaled yourself on a baton during the relays in PE because Connor smiled at you?"

Markus slaps her arm feebly. "North, bad karma!"


	2. a road that's quietly caving in

Hey everyone! Long time no see. Nearly a year. Yikes.

If you don't care about my life, you can skip the rest of this note and get on with the chapter! If you do, here:

I went away to university to study veterinary medicine, and I knew right from the off that I wouldn't have much free time, but I wanted to make time for my fic writing and a few other hobbies. What I didn't anticipate, though, was the fact that some of my teachers actively wanted me to fail (one even told me to my face that I didn't have the right background to be pursuing this career), that everybody on my course would look down on me for not being upper-class, and that my year on the course, meant to be specifically designed for people with my educational background, was actually designed for people with a completely different education background and as such I couldn't actually understand half of what was being taught to me. Add onto that my dad told me that he was having an affair, which he needed me to keep secret else he'd kill himself, then my parents getting divorced when he finally confessed to my mum (and the subsequent financial issues that meant I couldn't have stayed at uni anyway), and also my mum being physically disabled and my younger brother being mentally disabled and needing help around the house and with life in general – I had to leave the course. In some ways, it's disappointing, because being a vet was my dream career since I was very young and I also worked my arse off to get into it, but on the other hand – I was the most depressed I'd been in years, I had no time for hobbies, and what with Brexit happening, it probably would have been a pretty shitty career in the end anyway.

So, maybe for the best, and I already have a place on my next favourite course/career path: forensic science, which I'll be starting in another year, after my mum has retired and had an operation to hopefully make her a lot healthier and more mobile, and able to care for my brother. And in the meantime, I will hopefully have more time on my hands to refocus on my mental health, and pursue my hobbies!

Also, fun fact: this chapter was not beta-read and as it is pretty long, I did my best to check for errors but probably didn't catch them all!

* * *

"You really need to chill the fuck out," North says, peeling an orange viciously. Small spatters of juice spurt onto the wooden picnic table they're occupying, and Josh scoots his sandwich further away from her with a glare. North, as usual, either doesn't notice or takes no notice.

"I agree," Simon says unexpectedly. "Not – not so harsh, but – yeah, he's just a guy, Markus. Even if he's really hot and does awesome coin tricks." He grows defensive with their stares focused on him. "I can appreciate aesthetics," he huffs, and pops the lid off his Tupperware to get to his apple slices.

"So," Markus says, voice a little higher than usual in indignation. North snickers. He ignores her. "We're all in agreement that Connor's really hot?" His voice cracks just slightly as he says his crush's name, but everyone has the grace not to point it out.

"Markus," North interrupts. "Look, I've never said this before, because we're friends, and I – it's – ah – it would be awkward, but – here's the deal." She shoves a segment of the orange into her mouth and chews it viciously, swallowing it after three bites. If she did it to make Markus intimidated, it worked. "You're really hot, dude. Like, the six-pack, and the eyes, and just – your face, in general? And your aura, it's just hot. If anything, Connor should be the one intimidated by you, okay? If you weren't gay, and I wasn't gay, I would have been allllll up on that a long time ago."

Markus blinks. That was not what he was expecting. He was anticipating some kind of aggressive speech about how he needed to stop being a coward, not veiled compliments and an almost-proposition.

Josh sets his sandwich back down on the foil, chewing thoughtfully. "I don't think Connor is intimidated by anyone. Like...he just gives off that vibe , you know?"

"A vibe?" Simon repeats, sounding wholly unimpressed. "How exactly does one give off a vibe?"

"They just do, that's the point of a vibe," Josh argues. "They just – they vibe, you know?"

"They vibe," Simon scoffs.

"You know what he does have – big dick energy ," North chimes in enthusiastically, over Simon's low mutterings about vibes and Josh's annoyed noises.

"We're not having this conversation," Markus says, mostly to himself. He knows from approximately seventeen thousand past experiences that there's no point trying to get his friends to be quiet once they're on a roll.

Josh and Simon seem to have agreed to disagree, and are both eating their lunches again stonily. Markus cuts over North's background rambling about how long should the perfect dick be you don't want it too long right but not like tiny to ask them, "Do I give off a gay vibe?"

Predictably, Simon rolls his eyes. Josh just says, "Not so much a vibe. I think everyone just kind of knows. I'm sure Connor knows," he adds, sensing what Markus was really asking.

"I have Chemistry with him later, do you want me to find out?" Simon offers. "I'll be subtle."

"By subtle, do you mean you'll walk straight up to him and ask if he knows that Markus is gay?" North breaks in, apparently finished with her debate with herself over penis sizes. "Because, like, that's usually how you do things."

Simon bristles. "I do not," he protests hotly.

"You kind of do," Markus agrees. "Remember when North had that crush on Kara?"

They all wince. "Fine," Simon sighs. "That was a mistake. I should have approached with a different tactic."

"You walked straight up to her and asked if she liked vaginas." North narrows her eyes at him. "Then you said you were 'asking for a friend' and ran away when she told you she was dating Luther."

"But now you're friends," Simon says, weakly cheerful.

"Yeah, because we sit next to each other in History," North hisses. "And seeing as I'm the only female friend you have, I'm quite sure that she knows you were asking on my behalf."

"Children," Markus interrupts. "Not to sound too conceited, but we're talking about me right now, okay? Let's focus back on me, and my problems."

"One of my favourite things about you is your modesty," North says, and rips open a snack bar.

"And my apparent hotness." Markus knows that his grin must have reached shit-eating proportions. He's never letting her live that one down.

"There's no point in freaking out about this now," Josh points out, with his characteristic not-an-idiot-ness. "Wait for him to text you at least. Right now you have, like, twenty minutes of stilted conversation and project planning to be basing all of this wild freaking out on. Let's wait for a bit more content before we all start crying."

"Content," North snorts, "what, are we on a fucking TV show? A sitcom? What the fuck, Josh? Are we fandom favourites?"

"Maybe we are," Simon joins in, "maybe that's why we're all so messy - because we're entertaining the people!" North snaps her fingers at him, nodding as she shoves the rest of her orange into her mouth in one go.

"I hate you guys," Josh says, entirely serious, "I say like, one thing and suddenly it's the funniest thing ever and you won't shut the hell up about it."

Markus sighs and finally gets to opening his own lunch. Oh look, cheese sandwich. That's nice. He'll just eat that while his friends discuss the smutty fanfiction that would be written about them. That's nice and normal and fun.

Connor really hates the texture of pencils on glossy paper. He cringes every time he has to underline anything in his textbook with a sharpened 2H, the way it doesn't quite glide but feels like it should, the slight hitch that interrupts the movement; the way you can, almost imperceptibly, feel the layers of graphite sliding off underneath your fingers. As he reaches the end of the chapter he feels an irrationally strong surge of relief, chides himself for being so ridiculous, but still smiles when he sets the pencil down and switches to the pen, setting the nib at the top of the page. Freshly torn from the refill pad, set on a block of soft cardboard-like material that Hank had made for him specially because he hated writing with nothing underneath the page, but also hated writing on top of other paper and leaving a ghost of the words behind. Narrow grey lines, off-white paper, the contrast soft enough that it doesn't strain his eyes, no margins so he can draw his own in whatever style he chooses.

He re-reads every sentence that he's underlined, and mentally condenses it down as much as he can. Then he copies it down in neat, straight, even lettering – each alphabetic character is practically identical to its siblings, almost like a computer font in its regularity. Once he's managed to reduce the chapter of the textbook to a series of diagrams and bullet-points, out come the highlighters. He streaks through all key information: titles are cloaked in orange, dates in blue, pink in names. Any concepts and ideas are bathed in a lurid green, while a light purple highlights any important vocabulary. Yellow is last – for anything that doesn't fit into the other categories, but is still needed. Yellow is his least favourite colour, so it gets his least favourite category – the one that doesn't have a clearly defined box around it. He likes his boxes, and having everything fit into those boxes.

The notes are tidy. Uniform. Perfect.

Connor fixes the stray curl that plagues his forehead back into place and adjusts his collar.

Chapter 15: Henry VII's Socioeconomic Policies, 1485-1509 beckons, leering out of the page at the pseudo-innocuous pencil laid to rest beside it. Connor stares back, jaw clenching involuntarily before Sumo unceremoniously shoves his slobbery snout into Connor's thigh and demands the attention that befits a dog of his station. He sighs, but can't help but smile, and deftly scratches under Sumo's slightly damp chin. As the dog's eyes close in bliss, Connor wields the pencil once more, and gets to work after only a blissful few seconds to imagine how lovely it would be to stab himself through the eyeballs and never have to use a pencil on glossy paper again.

Five pages later, midway through a truly fascinating paragraph analysing trade routes, the pencil is knocked clean out of his hands by a gentle swing from a white paper bag, dotted with grease stains. Hank grumbles, "You work too hard," and it's hard to identify the tone as anything other than angry at first listen. But Connor's ears are well-trained to Hank now; he knows his adoptive father better than anybody else, and he knows that his tone is scolding only because he's concerned. "Put that shit away, it's useless." Connor doesn't fail to notice that, despite his words, Hank had waited for him to lift the pencil from the page before he'd batted it away so he didn't cause him to scrawl all over his book. And he's placed the bag carefully away from Connor's work so no grease leeches from the contents.

"Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes." Connor moves everything onto the empty chair next to him carefully, settling his pen and pencil into the crease of the textbook so they won't roll out.

"I'm sure not learning about some English king is going to stop World War Three from breaking out." Hank opens the bag, pulls out another smaller paper bag from inside, this one brown, and then snaps his fingers. "Shit. Plates. I got it."

"You don't have to," Connor calls after him, and then a quieter, "Thank you," when Hank just flaps a dismissive hand over his shoulder at him. He knows that if Hank was eating by himself he would have just eaten out of the cardboard carton or the paper wrap, and his appreciation that Hank has gone out of his way to accommodate one of Connor's quirks is mingled with guilt over making Hank do so in the first place.

Hank, with his intuitive father sense, seems to know what Connor's thinking and he sets the plate down in front of the two occupied chairs with a soft, "Don't feel guilty for making me less of a slob". Then, louder, "I didn't know if you wanted the fish burger or the beef burger, so I just got you both, and then they gave me two fries for them, so hope you're hungry." He sets down a bottle of beer for himself too, which sets off something of an alarm in his head - but then he notices that it's a fancy one, so Hank isn't planning to binge, he's going to appreciate the one drink and make it last. Not that Hank has drunk excessively for a while now, anyway, he realises with a small surge of guilt.

"I forgot to eat lunch," Connor admits, if 'admits' can mean 'half-lies', because he didn't forget so much as purposely didn't make himself one that morning and then purposely left his wallet behind so he could make an excuse to himself about not getting it at school. "But two portions would be very unhealthy."

"So's not eating enough," Hank points out, as if the food he's just put in front of Connor doesn't round up to at least three thousand calories. "And everyone deserves a cheat day."

"Every day is your cheat day," Connor replies absent-mindedly, then freezes in case his feeble attempt at a joke reminds Hank of his intermittent alcoholism.

"Obviously," is all his dad says though, unwrapping his own burgers and fries, then digging a dozen rainbow packets out of his pocket and tossing them into the space between them. "Good day at school?"

"Not good, not bad," Connor replies automatically, weighing up his options and then taking two ketchups, a salt and tartare sauce. "How was work?"

Hank immediately launches into a story about an encounter with Gavin Reed, his least favourite colleague, that involves a blow-up flamingo, two plaid shirts, and a novelty axe. Connor ends up so engrossed that he eats all of one burger and most of the other without realising, and puts what remains down for a moment to focus on the fries before they go cold.

"Anyway, the long and short of it is that Gavin nearly got blinded, Tina's banned from yoghurt, and the AC isn't going to be working for a good few months yet, so yeah, work was good I'd say."

Connor scoops his fries into the ketchup and chews contemplatively before he responds. "I thought you said about halfway through that you got a disciplinary for pretending you were going to break the window, and then actually breaking the window?"

"Because the axe was plastic and not foam like I thought, yeah."

"Most people wouldn't say that a day when they get a disciplinary warning is 'good'."

"I get a disciplinary every fuckin' day," Hank says dismissively. "My folder looks like a novel at this point, but I've won too many awards for anything to happen. It's like yin and yang, it cancels each other out."

"I don't think that's what yin and yang is." Connor gives the last bite of his burger to a patient Sumo, who almost takes his fingers off in his enthusiasm but then licks his hand to apologise. "Also, what if the day comes when the awards stop cancelling out the disciplinaries?"

"I'll be retired before then." From anyone else it could be seen as bragging, but from Hank it's a simple statement of fact: he's proud of his awards, but doesn't have an ounce of hubris in his body, and he's well aware that his glory days are past now. "Anyway, Fowler couldn't stand to have me leave."

Connor doubts that. "I doubt that." Whenever he sees the Captain he's angry or stressed or some other negative emotion, and Hank only seems to exacerbate the situation. Only once has Connor seen him cheer up his superior, and that was because Hank slipped on a patch of ice in the parking lot.

Hank snorts. "He loves me. Saved his ass at the academy too many times for him not to."

"Saved as in…?" Connor can't help imagining dramatic montages of Hank tackling the Captain out of the way of a rainstorm of bullets while Guns N Roses plays in the background.

"I covered for him when he was hungover," Hank mumbles around a mouthful of burger.

"Oh. Right. Of course. He's...still grateful for that?"

Hank points a fry at him. A small blob of ketchup wobbles and drops off onto his plate. "The bonds you forge in the classroom," he says, in his serious voice, "last a lifetime." He picks up several more fries and puts them all into his mouth at once, and then says in between chews, "Speaking of - you make any friends today?"

"As with every day - no. I'm not...interested in friends, I suppose. School is for learning."

"It is, yeah, but that's not what it's all about. You make friendships that last for life, and - hey, hey, you learn about social skills."

Connor isn't impressed. "I know you're trying to manipulate me into making friends, Hank."

Hank has the grace to look ashamed. "Okay, yeah, well, not manipulate - but if it makes you want to make friends, if that's how your brain needs to see it…" He gestures uselessly with his hands, looking defeated.

"Sorry. I know you weren't trying to manipulate me." Connor eats a few more fries to buy himself some time. He knows Hank doesn't fully understand how he works, but he tries his absolute best, and if the result of that is slightly misguided but well-meaning advice, he'll take it. "I just don't really connect with anyone. I'm not trying to...not make friends."

Hank's face softens. "I know, son. I know. I just...want you to be happy."

"I had a positive interaction today," Connor offers. He is rewarded with a beam from Hank, and is so relieved that he forgets to expand at all until a hand wave prompts him. "Oh, sorry. We have an English project, and our teacher paired us up randomly. We had the lesson together today and we'll need to meet up outside of school, too."

"Good! That's good! Planning to cause an explosion like those kids last year?"

Connor's eyes crinkle where the two lids meet each other at the edges, a subtle but sure sign he's amused. "Funny you should say that, I'm actually doing the project with one of 'those kids'."

"Shit," Hank groans with clearly exaggerated horror, dragging a hand over his face. "Please don't get us called out. I would never live it down if my own kid caused a bomb scare."

My own kid.

Hank, for whatever reason, finds Connor's deadpan amusing. This is useful when Connor isn't capable of showing his current emotion. "I'll do my best." Connor strips his face of any expression to follow his voice's suit.

Hank looks up in suspicious worry, then realises he's been had. "Fucking hell." He shakes his head in mock despair, shaggy grey hair following the movement. He needs a haircut soon, or he'll end up looking like an ageing rock star. Connor makes a mental note to call the barbers and secure an appointment. "Anyway, what's this project about?"

"It's for English. We're doing a project about feminism through the ages - at first it was just going to be characters from literature, but I bumped into my teacher at the end of the day and asked if we could do examples of real people, too, and from other media, and she said yes."

Hank gives Connor that look, the one that means I'm really proud of you , and Connor nearly misses what he says next because he's preoccupied trying to figure out if Hank is proud of him for doing a group project on feminism or if Hank is proud of him for doing a group project on feminism. Or maybe for talking to a teacher voluntarily. "What's the plan then, for this project?"

"I'm going to message him later tonight and confirm, but I'm thinking that he could do the classic and historical examples, and I can research the modern ones. Then we can put them together to collaborate on an essay, as well as preparing a shorter presentation for the class. I'm hoping to include an analysis of popular female characters throughout a variety of genres and types of media, an evaluation of how female characters and females themselves have changed over the years with a direct relation to feminism, as well as clearly outlining some themes and cultural references. I'm hoping to include several quotes in there too."

Hank seems to be slightly bulldozed. "That's, uh...more intelligent than anything I could ever come up with, kid."

"I couldn't crack a fifteen-year cold case with no new leads like you did last month," Connor points out. He doesn't know how serious Hank is being when he talks like this, but he doesn't want to run even the slightest risk that his adoptive father could slip into a bout of melancholia - or worse.

"You will one day, kid, you'll be a fucking great detective," Hank says, with so much sincerity that Connor thinks he might collapse under the weight of it. "But for now - focus on this project. Who're you doing it with, then? I remember those exploding kids. Especially the girl - Chris tried to take her statement and she just kept going on about her civil rights to make things explode. Then a few months' later she got brought in for keying this guy's car because he cat-called her. Amazing ."

"That's North Kelley." Connor smiles. He hasn't had that many experiences with her, and none outside of the school halls or classrooms, but the limited knowledge he has of her personality line up with Hank's story. "I think she was probably the driving force behind the explosion. Markus seems more laid-back and sensible. I'm doing the project with him."

"Well." Hank shifts in his seat, which prompts Sumo to galumph over to him and beg for fuss. "Well," he repeats, scratching Sumo's ears obligingly, "I'm glad you won't be dragged into causing any explosions. That's usually a good thing." He drinks his beer for a few seconds as Connor mulls over his use of the word usually , each second bringing more disturbing connotations. "But North might have brought you out of your shell a bit. Maybe even change into a new one."

Connor bristles slightly. "I'm not a hermit crab! And I think Markus will do that anyway. He's, uh - he's good. A good person. Clever. And nice." Connor holds Hank's stare for a few more moments before ducking his head and clicking his tongue. Sumo comes back to his favourite human - a statement of fact, he feeds and walks him - and collapses against his legs with all the force of a ten-ton truck.

"I think I remember seeing him once," Hank says casually (too casually) after a (too-long) hesitation. "He came into the station with his father. To pick up his brother." He lets the end of his sentence lift up at the end, like he's not entirely sure he's correct.

"For red ice possession," Connor supplies. If he doesn't say it, Hank will, so he might as well speed up the process. "I was there, doing homework."

"Mm. I remember." Like there was any ever doubt. "His dad's that artist, right? Carl Manfred?"

"Yeah. Markus likes art, too." He didn't mean to say that. Why did he say that? His mouth is no longer under the control of his brain. This cannot mean anything good.

Hank nods. (Too slowly.) "He was, uh. Good-looking." He throws the word out into the space between them like a gauntlet, waiting for Connor to pick it up and accept the challenge.

Accept he does. "I suppose. Objectively. Heterochromia is rare so it makes one seem exotic. Exotic looks tend to be more attractive as it is outside of our normal experience and this is exciting. On a more primal level, exotic looks signal to us that we do not share a similar gene pool, which is beneficial for reproduction." Connor has pulled all of this out of his ass, but it sounds like it could be real.

Hank blinks once, then downs the rest of his beer in one gulp. "Kid," he begins, "your face is red enough to be a beacon for a UFO from fuckin' Mars."

"It's very hot in here," Connor rebutts, conveniently ignoring the fact that it's actually leaning towards the colder side because dinner has run a bit late and neither of them have flicked on the heating yet. "Also, Sumo is on my toes. It's slightly painful, and repressing any exclamations or indications of pain is causing my face to flush."

"I don't think that's how it works."

"I think it is." Break down that stellar defense, if you can.

Hank exhales heavily. He swings the beer bottle between his fingers by its neck, contemplating the best way to broach this topic with Connor. If he's too forward, too direct, Connor will close off, either by changing the subject or refusing to talk or straight-up sprinting out of the house - Hank has an unfortunate amount of experience with that - but if he's too vague then Connor will continue to feign ignorance before excusing himself because he needs to do homework or take a shower or sit in an armchair and think about physics, or whatever the weird boy does for a hobby.

"Connor…" The beer bottle swings. Too heavy a force one way, or too light another, and the momentum will become unbalanced and stutter, and the pattern will be irreparably broken. "I'm not homophobic. Or biphobic. Or whatever other phobias you can have towards people."

"I know you're not." Either Connor is being purposefully dense...or he's not. The two options don't really narrow anything down. "It's part of what makes you a fantastic police lieutenant."

"Shucks, kid. Gonna give me a big head one of these days." How could anyone hate this kid - well, how could anyone hate any kid, really, but especially this one - when he was so earnest and kind and unapologetically pure in a world that wasn't? One of these days he was going to track down the fuckers who neglected Connor and left him by himself at just seven years old in a fucking condemned building surrounded by old drug paraphanalia. Besides the point. "Anyway, kid, listen...that doesn't just apply when I'm at work, you know that?"

"I am aware," Connor says stiffly, which means that he's figured out where this conversation is going.

"I don't care if you're gay." Rip the band-aid off.

"...I am aware."

Hank waits for more, before remembering that this is Connor he's talking to, and what the hell is he doing expecting more than an emotionally stunted barely-sentence? "I'm not going to press you to tell me. But you can if you want. You can tell me anything." He stops swinging the bottle, sets it upright and steady on the table. Then, after a full minute passes in silence, with Connor still avoiding eye contact, he gets up, and is about to clear the plates when -

"There's no point."

"No point to what?" Hank doesn't sit back down - that could indicate he's wanting a long conversation, which could spook Connor out of talking more - but he leans against his chair - to show that he's listening, he's not in a hurry to get away. Some people would say that Connor is difficult, complicated, a problem child . Hank would say those people are idiots. His boy is the epitome of an open book if you just spend more than two seconds focusing on something other than yourself.

"To...coming out, admitting to a crush, whatever." Sumo's head lolls back as Connor's ministrations increase in speed and intensity. Stupid oaf, and by fuck Hank loves him. Sumo too. "It's - there's - nothing will - will happen , you know? I'm not someone that - that can be in a relationship, Hank."

"That's bullshit," Hank says softly. "It doesn't matter if your brain doesn't work like everyone else's - in fact, I think it works better than everyone else's, and you deserve someone who can see that too. Kids are cruel, and the things they think are, are, weird or whatever right now - now those are the things that set you apart. You're one of the kindest souls I've ever met, your heart is too big for your own fuckin' chest, you're practically a genius, and even without all of those - you're still important, Connor, because you're still a person. You're still Connor. But those things make up Connor, so - just forget about anyone who doesn't like them, yeah?"

At some point, Connor's looked up to him, big brown poodle eyes wet as he stares at Hank. "My emotions are kind of broken," he mumbles, voice trembling like he's afraid he'll finally see the light of day and kick him out of his home.

"Everybody's a little broken, everybody's repairing themselves all the time. What are those - those pots, and stuff, where they fix them with gold, and they look even better than before? That's what you're like."

"Kintsugi?" Connor offers.

"Probably. That's you. Kintsugi, okay? Not everything is unbroken, but it's fixed enough, and it's more beautiful for it. You learn from your experiences, and you grow."

"I don't see why someone like Markus would ever like someone like me."

They're moving away from problems Connor has with himself and setting course towards the usual teenage angst about crushes - Hank takes this as progress. "Markus ain't got shit on you, okay? Oooh, he's got heterochromia, oooh, he can do art, oooh, he once blew up half of a classroom talking about To Kill A Mockingbird - but you're Connor, okay? Connor fuckin' Anderson. Say it with me."

"Connor fucking Anderson," they chorus together, and even though Connor is crying and valiantly pretending not to, he's also smiling brighter than the sun.

The boy sniffs, wipes at his cheeks with his sweater pulled over his hands like paws, then pulls his legs up onto the chair to press against his chest. His toes wiggle up and down over the lip of the chair - typical of Connor, he can never sit still. "Thanks Dad," he says quietly, like every time he says that word it doesn't make something in Hank's chest erupt into a supernova of overwhelming aching affection and cause his entire outlook on life to shine just a little bit brighter.

"No problem, son," Hank says gruffly, and then because it's getting too sappy for the two of them to handle, he adds, "if this works out with Markus, or any other guy for that matter, I want you to be safe, okay? And you can come to me - it'll be embarrassing, but I can get you stuff, you know, condoms, lu-"

"I think we should clean up the table now," Connor says, very loudly and very suddenly, and picks up the glasses and plates and cutlery with a lot more noise than arguably necessary. His face has somehow become even redder. "Thanks for the meal, Hank."

Hank grabs the takeaway bag and shoves all the other wrappers into it. "Want to watch some TV for a bit?" he offers.

In the kitchen, Connor makes a happy, affirmative noise - and this is something Hank never thought he'd have after Cole. A child in the house who answers his questions with noises that Hank can identify without even thinking, and it's right. It's right. It's what it should be.

He shoves the bag of takeout wrappers into the bin, nearly overflowing, and pats his leg to signal Sumo to follow him into the living room. He would help Connor stack the dishwasher, and tidy up in general, but Hank had learnt within the first few days of their living together that it was more distressing to Connor to have his routines or rituals interrupted than it was to do household chores by himself.

He sets up the living room instead, dragging the coffee table closer so Connor can put their mugs of whatever tea he's currently making on it. Sumo jumps up onto the armchair with his current favourite toy (victim) and gnaws on it while Hank shuffles around the room, grabbing Connor's laptop from the side-table where it was charging and setting it on the arm of the sofa, then clearing the cushions off the sofa because Connor insisted on having the decorations there during the day but refused to utilise them for comfort.

Connor wanders in with two mugs, both steaming, as Hank presses every button on the remote control until he manages to navigate to Netflix. His own is plain white on the outside, but Hank knows that inside you've been poisoned is scrawled over the base, something that never fails to give Connor instant and apparently endless amusement. He sets them on the coffee table, nudging Hank's mug towards him on the coaster. It's the one that says Number One Dad on it; Connor gave it to him shyly on their fifth Father's Day together, and it's the one that Connor uses when he's feeling particularly grateful for something Hank has done. "Chamomile," he says, picking up his laptop and throwing himself onto the couch. "Is it alright if I do some work while we watch?"

"Course. I'm still pissed off that you figured out that plot twist, by the way." He finally manages to muddle his way through Netflix's maze of categories and starts the show.

"I thought it was too obvious to actually happen," Connor protests, "I said it as a joke."

"Nobody guesses the plot twist in The Good Place ! You're like - you're like Janet."

"That's a compliment," Connor says smugly, tipping his mug towards Hank in a small salute. They both quieten down as the 'previously on' concludes, and he opens up his PC, loading up Chrome and a new Word document.

Two episodes later, and with several pages of planning and research under his belt, he pulls his phone from his pocket and finds Markus's contact details, entered earlier after their slightly confusing interaction.

Compose message to: Markus Manfred

Hi, Markus! It's Connor. I've done some research for the project we're doing, I hope you don't mind, but I've made a short outline that I think we could use. Let me know if you want to see it and/or use it, or if you want to start over. Either is fine! -Connor

* * *

"I'm just saying, if Markus was a character in a show, or, or, a game or something, people would like - be racist, right?"

"North, what the fuck are you talking about?"

"Like - he's mixed race, right? So - the fans would either whitewash him, or they'd go the opposite way and like, overexaggerate things that are part of his - hang on, this is going to sound racist too - his blackness , you know? Like, they'd say, 'Look how tall and strong he is compared to this white character!' even if the white character was basically the same height and build as him."

"I don't-"

"I think what North is trying to say is that multiracial characters tend to be stereotyped as one of the races that they are, rather than being allowed to exist as multiple ethnicities, and a result part of their identity is always erased rather than co-existing."

"Yes! Yes, Josh, that's exactly what I was trying to say! Thanks for making it not racist."

"Anytime. I'm the token black friend, I teach you how to be woke and die first in horror situations."

"I'm still - wait, why are we talking about Markus like he's not on Skype with us?"

"Good question, Simon, why are you talking about me like I'm not on Skype with you?" Markus smudges one of the streaks of charcoal with his thumb, then leans back to look at his picture as a whole. A little bit more - yeah, that's it. Perfect.

"Because you haven't been paying attention to us for like, fifteen minutes," North chimes in, popping back into her section of the screen. She's in the kitchen, making herself a snack, and keeps wandering in and out of view of the camera, so he's not sure if she has a leg to stand on.

"I have, I just haven't had anything to say," Markus objects. He glances over at his display - typical rich kid, he has a massive monitor in the art room that he hooks up to his laptop for Skype sessions, so his friends' faces are pretty much life-size, even with a third of the screen each. It's like they're actually in front of him, if they were slightly fuzzy and each missing their bodies from the neck down. "You were talking about some YouTubers I've never heard of, and then suddenly started going on about my race."

"Whatever." North's image suddenly shakes as she grabs her laptop and walks with it in front of her. "You're just a coward. You're just a Connor-loving coward."

"Those two things have no correlation," Markus disagrees.

"The correlation," North explains, waving a celery stick wildly in an approximation of two axes and then stabbing it randomly to emphasise her point, "is that you love Connor, and you're too much of a coward to tell him." There's another jerk as she plonks the laptop onto the bed and then jumps to sit in front of it, grabbing her cat Star as he tries to escape. "No, you love me," she tells him, "you're not allowed to leave."

"I'm not a coward for not telling him," Markus snaps. "I don't know his sexuality, I don't know him well enough to know if this would make him feel awkward or not."

"Oh, so this is just you being a good person?" North asks, biting off some of the celery with a sharp snick. Star suddenly looks more interested to be there and starts pawing at North's shoulder ineffectually.

"Yes, actually, North, it is."

"I think you could argue both points of view here," Josh says diplomatically.

"You'd be a great politician," Simon tells him. "Josh for President, anyone?"

Markus's phone chimes and cuts off whatever acerbic reply Josh was formulating. He tucks the stick of charcoal onto the small shelf underneath the easel and claps his hands together to get the worst of the dust off. He's suddenly aware that his friends are all watching him intently. "North, your cat is eating your celery," he warns, and North swears and pulls the stick away from Star, who stalks off smugly with half a stick of celery in his belly.

North, predictably, is the one to burst. "Is it Connor?" she asks eagerly, less than three seconds after he's unlocked the screen and navigated to the message.

"It is," Markus says, forcing his voice to stay low and even and unwavering, because he is a normal person with normal emotions and normal reactions to normal events.

"Well?" she demands.

"He just says that he's started some research for the project and would I like to see it. Then he signed off even though he'd already said his name in the message. That's kind of cute." Markus looks up to three judging pairs of eyes. "I'm allowed to think things are cute!"

"It's just that when it comes to Connor, you think that everything he does is cute," Simon points out hesitantly. "It's a little-"

"Concerning," North butts in. "It's worrying, Markus. I'm worried about you."

"North," Josh says warningly.

"What? Markus can express his stupid feelings, but I can't?"

"Do you think we could go, like, two hours without arguing?" Simon intones tiredly.

"No," the other three answer as a whole, and then North starts laughing - and her laugh is more like a cackle, really, which sets the rest of them off, and Markus has to put his phone down before he accidentally hits the keys and sends Connor an eloquent reply of ehgrysh .

Markus can barely remember how they all became friends, it was so long ago. He has vague memories of playing pirates on the mocked-up ship Jericho at the local playground, calling themselves the Jericrew and thinking they were so clever for it. Their dynamic has always been - interesting, to say the least. Right from the start North was hot-tempered and quick to action, while Josh was placid and pacifist, with Simon and Markus plonked somewhere in the middle and often playing the role of the mediators. But as acrimonious as their relationships seem to outsiders, and sometimes to each other, as much as they squabble over anything ranging from the best type of chocolate to personal values and politics, there's a constant thrumming bassline of affection and care and love that plays underneath the harmony of their interactions. Markus knows without a doubt that he would risk his life for any of the others', and that they would do the same for him.

He shakes away the thought before he can get too sentimental; North ruled a good few years ago that emotional declarations of feelings, or love for each other, are only allowed on two occasions: one, if they're at a sleepover and it's the early hours of the morning and they're all getting weird and philosophical from the sleep deprivation; or two, if somebody's having an emotional breakdown and can't control their quote-unquote 'mushy crap filter'.

Fuck it.

"I love you guys," Markus says suddenly, and then clears his throat and starts drawing again immediately, avoiding at the screen, because yeah he just broke one of North's rules but that doesn't mean he's not scared of her suddenly.

"Markus," North finally says. Her voice is flat but her mouth is upturned, and maybe it's the dodgy quality of her webcam but her eyes look like they're shining just a bit. "I did not say this was emotion time."

"I know, I'm sorry."

"I will let it slide just this once." She makes a show of checking her watch. "You all have ten seconds to get the rest of your feelings out. Go!" She holds up both her hands and starts flicking fingers down. Ten. Nine.

"You're all amazing," Simon blurts. "I'm so happy to know all of you." Seven.

"You guys are my best friends and I don't think I could love you more," is Josh's contribution. Four.

He might have started this, but Markus has more to say. "I'm really thankful you're in my life." Two. One.

Just before she puts her last finger down, North mutters, "Iloveyouallsomuchpleaseneverleaveme," and then slams her palms down onto her duvet. Her laptop topples backwards with the force and as she rights it again she looks back to her normal, emotion-hating blank slate.

"Now that we've had our unscheduled interruption," she announces grandly, looking at Markus with a steely glare, "let's get back to our regular programming! Markus, how are you going to reply to the text?"

"Uh, I don't know what to say without sounding like a moron." He shrugs helplessly, snatching his phone back up. "It's my default state."

"Baby's all grown up and self-aware," North sighs, just as Simon mutters, "You got that right." They both look delighted - Josh, in between them both physically on the screen and in life, looks like his soul has been sucked out of his body - and North claps gleefully. Before she can launch into a full-on impression of Shane Madej's Mothman, as North tends to do in any situation that requires applause, Josh provides a welcome distraction.

"Do you need our help writing the reply?" is what his mouth says. 'Please don't ask me for help I'm so done with your stupid crush,' his eyes beseech.

Markus pretends not to notice. "Yes please," and Josh's smile would pass for genuine if not for the silent wish for death in his wide, wide eyes.

"Right, so," he begins.

North, who is apparently in one of her more benevolent moods today, performs the necessary coup and talks over Josh's stumbling string of filler words. "Tell us exactly what he said, punctuation and all," she instructs.

Markus clears his throat for a dramatic reading of Text Conversation with Connor Anderson. "Hi comma Markus exclamation mark. It's Connor, period. I've done some research for the project we're doing, comma, I hope you don't mind, comma, but I've made a short outline that I think we could use, period. Let me know if you want to see it and slash or use it, comma, or if you want to start over, period. Either is fine exclamation mark. Dash Connor."

North is nodding sagely, chin balanced on her steepled hands, eyes closed like she's absorbing the wisdom of an ancient grand master. "I can work with this," she whispers, probably to herself. "This is good, Markus," she says louder. "It's friendly."

"It is? I'll press X on that," Josh chimes in unhelpfully. "For doubt, not to call Jason."

"It's friendly for Connor," North explains patiently. "He's very formal, to everyone. But there are different ways of being formal. There's, like, when you're formal to teachers because you have to be really polite and they're meant to be talked to with, you know, respect ." She rolls her eyes at the foreign concept and Markus bites his tongue so she can press on. "But then there's this type of formal, which is when you don't know someone well, or in Connor's case - it's just how you talk - but there's a like, underlying friendliness to it. He's - he's being polite, and formal, but you can tell he wants to talk to you!"

North must be some kind of genius, Markus thinks, because he didn't get any of that. Then again, all he gets whenever he talks to Connor is a whole load of angina. "Okay, so, how do I respond? I want to be, like, formal back to show I respect him, and the way he talks, but also be friendly, and inviting, but not too friendly? And show that I care about him, but not be too creepy and forward about it. Oh, and maybe hint just slightly that I want to have his babies."

Simon and Josh are both looking at him like he's insane, but Markus can't bring himself to be offended, because he kind of definitely is. North, on the other hand, looks positively ecstatic at the opportunity presented to her.

"We're going to mirror," she decides. "Use his message as a template. Perfect. Hang on, I wrote down what you said he sent - let me just recap." As far as Markus's memory can be relied upon, she didn't expend this much energy on last year's exams.

"When did this become my life," Josh mourns from his sliver of screen. Simon isn't visible in his section, so he's either left the room in despair or just let himself slide off his chair onto the floor in defeat.

Wait. Oh shit. Does he - does he have his read receipts on? Can Connor see that he read his messages ten minutes ago and hasn't replied yet? Shitballs.

"Okay, got it." North's voice jerks him away from his phone. She's practically glowing with excitement - if time wasn't so imperative right now, he'd make a joke about her being pregnant. Actually, he wouldn't, because she'd gut-punch him for it tomorrow at school. "Now, write this exactly as I say it, punctuation and all. Actually - hold your phone up to the microphone and I'll dictate it straight there!"

Obediently, Markus hits the little microphone icon next to the speech bar and holds it up for North to talk, nodding at her when it's initialised. "Hi Connor exclamation mark. Thanks for texting me so soon period. And thanks for doing the work comma, you should have let me help you exclamation mark. If you wouldn't mind sending me your outline comma, I'm sure it will be amazing, open brackets most things you do are, close brackets period. Then we could sort out who's doing what and move forward question mark." She nods when she's finished, and amazingly when Markus checks the phone seems to have accurately picked up everything that she said.

Compose message to: Connor Anderson

Hi Connor! Thanks for texting me so soon. And thanks for doing the work, you should have let me help you! If you wouldn't mind sending me your outline, I'm sure it will be amazing (most things you do are). Then we could sort out who's doing what and move forward?

"You don't think that's too presumptuous?" Markus worries at his lip, tapping over the bracketed phrase. Not that he shies away from speaking his mind or his feelings, but… "I don't want him to think I'm some kind of brazen hussy."

"It's very subtle," North reassures. "It could be taken as a friendly compliment, but at the same time it makes you wonder if there's more! Connor will pick up on all of that, I promise. And if he has feelings for you, it will drive him wild. But if he doesn't, he won't think you're a weirdo for it, he'll think he's just over-analysing and dismiss it. Oh, add your name at the end. Like Connor did. And a smiley face, just a simple one."

Compose message to: Connor Anderson

Hi Connor! Thanks for texting me so soon. And thanks for doing the work, you should have let me help you! If you wouldn't mind sending me your outline, I'm sure it will be amazing (most things you do are). Then we could sort out who's doing what and move forward? -Markus :)

"Perfect," North breathes, when he holds his phone up to the screen to show her. "I've created beauty."

"You sound like a mad scientist," Markus warns her.

"And you say that like it's a bad thing," she retorts. "Hey - Simon, where'd you go?"

No response from the middle of the screen. On the right, though, Josh appears to have acquired a brownie from somewhere. "Have we finished talking about Markus's unending love for Connor yet?" he asks wearily.

"Mostly!" North chirps. "How about we move on and have a good ol' gossip session instead? Connor's adopted, right? Does anybody know why?"

"I heard he was found in a ditch," Josh offers. Josh offers nothing else.

"Okay," North says, after ten seconds of uncomfortable silence stretch on. "I'm assuming you mean as a baby, and not, like, yesterday. Anyway, I heard a rumour that he was the result of an unplanned pregnancy between an unmarried couple, and their strict traditionalist parents wouldn't have accepted it so instead they secretly gave the baby up for adoption."

"You guys hear way more interesting rumours than me," Markus remarks, impressed. "I've only heard like, one person talking about it, and they just said that he was given up as a young child and adopted by his dad now."

"That's so boring!" North protests. "Nobody would make a Hollywood movie out of that."

"Life isn't a Hollywood movie," Josh points out monotonously.

Simon slithers back into view - he was in a heap on the floor, Markus knew it. "The project would be a perfect time for you to ask Connor about his background, you know."

"Bold of you to assume that I can say more than three words when I'm around Connor." He picks his charcoal back up and starts sketching once more, marking harsher lines than he was intending to in his exasperation. "I just - I know it's ridiculous, but I can't help it, okay?"

"We know, Markus," North says sympathetically, "we know you have the intelligence of a woodlouse and the skills of another, less impressive woodlouse."

The large doors to the art studio suddenly fling themselves open, and Markus nearly hurls his charcoal at the intruder before he realises who it is. "Carl!" he says in relieved surprise. He should have known. His dad's need to be dramatic is as ingrained as his artistic talent.

The old man frowns at him as he wheels in, the electronic hum of his chair reverberating around the vast studio. "Why are you holding that charcoal like you're going to impale my eyeball with it?"

Markus puts the charcoal down hastily. "You startled me," he says sheepishly.

"I am very intimidating," Carl agrees with a chuckle, steering himself deftly around a cluster of empty paint cans to join him. "Hello, Jericrew."

His friends greet Carl with a great deal more zeal than they have ever given him, North in particular making a noise like a bird of paradise. "Did you have a good day?" Simon asks politely, because Simon is always mannerly and civil and addresses Carl as 'Mr Manfred' no matter how many times he's been told otherwise.

Carl waves a hand, frail fingers that belie an enormous talent fluttering. "I spent half of it listening to a bunch of old white men talk about why funding in schools shouldn't be given to the arts, and the other half at a gallery full of old white men pretending they cared about art."

"I feel compelled to point out that you're an old white man," North says with a wink, raising another celery stick in salute.

"And that's why I hate them so much," Carl says resolutely, "I know all of their inner workings. I know just how foul they are." He shakes his head. "Enough about my day. Anything interesting happen at school today?"

North bites off some celery viciously and grins, showing her pointed canines, before she speaks. "Markus has some exciting news."

"I don't," Markus says quickly. For all that North proclaims to hate English and literature, she seems to enjoy foreshadowing her own torment of Markus with vampiric grins.

"Oh?" Carl raises an eyebrow at him. With all the time over the years that North has spent at the Lafayette mansion, she's practically one of his own children, and so Carl is fully aware that this news could be anything ranging from an award he's won for some of his art, to another explosion he's unwittingly caused.

"I have a project, that's it." Markus shrugs like it's no big deal, some part of him vainly hoping that North will drop the topic, or maybe one of the other two will be courageous enough to intercept her.

"With Connoooooooooooooor," North singsongs, gnawing on her snack like a chipmunk to hide her smirk.

"Who's Connor?" Carl inquires, perking up immediately. Markus has never mentioned the name to his adoptive father, or any potential romantic interest for that matter, but North's tone of voice really doesn't leave much to the imagination. "He wouldn't happen to be this handsome young man you're sketching, would he?"

"Oh, no, Markus," Josh sighs. He seems disproportionally disappointed.

North, on the contrary, seems disproportionally excited by this revelation. "You're drawing him?" she shrieks. "Carl, show us! Show us!"

Carl reaches for the laptop just as Markus does, but wrinkled, liver-spotted hands reach it first and Markus withdraws his own in fear of hurting the older man. He knows it's a little over the top, but he's all too aware that just one wrong move could cause Carl to tip out of the wheelchair and hit his head, or one accidental scratch could lead to an infection he wouldn't be able to fight off. So reluctantly, and with no small amount of embarrassment, he allows the laptop to be spun around - carefully, because it still has the HDMI cable sticking out of it - and focused onto his canvas.

It's unfinished, just the skeleton of what he wants it to be - the outline of Connor's face is there in confident streaks; his sharp jawline, a suggestion of his hair in smudges of Markus's thumbprint. He's only just begun to sketch out the nose, the eyes, the mouth - not even the eyebrows have been finished properly yet.

"I'll finish it soon," Markus says after the silence rolls out for a few more seconds. "It's not done yet."

"I still think your crush has reached creep proportions," Josh says eventually, "but that's a sick drawing."

"I can drink to that," North murmurs, eyes raking over her screen. "I want you to illustrate my funeral. Draw my dead body like one of your French girls, Markus."

"Please," Simon says, eyes pinched shut, "stop talking, North."

North starts eating obnoxiously harshly instead, chewing her celery with an open mouth and leaning in close so they can all see her teeth gnashing together.

"Don't you just love the friends I've made," Markus says, ostensibly to Carl, less ostensibly to himself. "So polite and elegant."

"The follies of youth," Carl smiles, hands trembling slightly as he picks up an unopened package of paints and begins to carefully unseal it. "Would this Connor happen to be the same Connor Anderson that is the Lieutenant's son, by any chance?"

Markus nods sheepishly. "He was at the station that time we went to pick up Leo."

At the mention of his son, Carl's shoulders tense slightly. The light blue of his eyes is almost swallowed by the black holes of his dilating pupils, and the lines on his face deepen for just a fraction of a second as his lips twitch downwards, but then it's all gone as if it never occurred at all, and, "I remember," he says easily, "he was at the desk, doing some work."

North, losing interest in tormenting Simon for the time being (Josh stopped being affected by her years and years ago - Markus studied the phenomenon in psychology, learned helplessness), focuses on their conversation. "Do you know Lieutenant Anderson?" she asks eagerly, leaning back so her face rather than just her mouth takes up the entirety of her screen. "Because we were just talking about how nobody knows Connor's tragic backstory, and we can't have Markus making his moves without full intelligence, you know?"

"It would be a foolhardy endeavour," Carl agrees, "and I admit that I wouldn't say I know the Lieutenant as such..." He wheels himself nearer to the laptop. "But I am acquainted with him, certainly, he's taken over Leo's case so we've been in contact somewhat. And I would call Connor's backstory tragic, indeed." He resumes picking at the packaging on the cardboard box, but he's definitely distracted now, nails scrabbling at the machine cut edges of the tape rather than carefully finding a weak point and working it open from there.

"Was he found in a ditch?" Josh asks.

"Please say he wasn't found in a ditch," Simon mutters.

Carl, to his credit, doesn't ask. "How about I start at the beginning?" At assenting nods, he continues, "There was a short wait as some paperwork was filed to release Leo, and we ended up making small talk - Markus, you had gone to wait in the reception area, I believe."

He had. Having to bail Leo out for yet more red ice charges was a stressful venture in itself, but combined with being just a corridor away from Connor, and knowing that Connor was aware of his dysfunctional brother, had made his head spin so much that he had needed to prop himself against the wall to stay standing. Carl had noticed and kindly but firmly instructed him to go and sit down, and the Lieutenant had told him to make use of the coffee machine on the reception desk if he needed to.

"We were just talking about parenting, and about how difficult it can be. He mentioned that you seemed to be a good kid," he pauses in mirth for a second as his friends laugh and jeer and make comments along the lines of you haven't seen him after a few shots , "and I said that I'd adopted you only a few years back, and that was probably why you'd turned out better adjusted than Leo."

Markus has to cut in. "You're a great dad, Carl," he protests.

"Yeah, you're a better dad than mine," North adds, "which isn't hard, but, you know. You're basically a second dad to all of us."

Carl looks genuinely touched and pats Markus on the shoulder, leaving his hand there. "Thank you. Well, whatever the reason, I mentioned your adoption, and then the Lieutenant said that he had adopted Connor when he was seven, so naturally I asked how that had come to be." He finally frees the inner contents from the box and tips it out into his lap triumphantly, examining the labels: Royal Berry, Marine Splash, Lemon Punch and Volcanic Red. "He said that he'd been part of the team at a crime scene, two murders - just as they were finishing up, they heard a noise from the attic, and went in guns drawn to find Connor, a tiny little boy, curled up in the corner, half-starved and covered in dirt."

"Holy shit." North looks actually sympathetic for once, despite her proclaimed hatred for children. More than once she has expressed vitriol for their "inability to take care of themselves". Nobody points this out, too engrossed by Carl's story.

"Turns out the murder victims were red ice dealers, presumably involved in some kind of dispute with a gang or a client. They think Connor's parents were at least users, because they found needles absolutely everywhere. When they talked to him, Connor said his parents had gone out a while ago and said they'd be back, then a bit after that he heard some people come in so he ran upstairs with his backpack - which had some supplies in, I believe, but not many - and hid. The time of death was between one and two weeks before, so who knows how long Connor had been up there without food or water until they found him." Carl sighs, stroking over Marine Splash contemplatively. "They called social services, but there was some kind of delay so the Lieutenant took him in for a couple of days. His, ah - his own son had died two years before, and he was a similar age, so he had a room suitable for a child, and experience too."

"The Lieutenant has a tragic backstory too," Simon breathes. "It was fate that they would find each other." Even Markus gives him a weird look for that.

"The rest, as they say, is history. Connor needed a parent, and the Lieutenant needed a son." Carl hands Markus the pot of Volcanic Red to put on the shelf nearest to him. "I hope you don't use this information for your own gain."

"You think I'm going to blackmail him?" Markus squeaks indignantly. "Into dating me?" He puts Volcanic Red down with more force than he intended, and then has to restrain himself from apologising to the paint for his mistreatment, if only because North would rip the absolute shit out of him for it until he was on his deathbed.

"Oh, no, I trust you," Carl reassures. He points to North. "This one, however…" His eyes twinkle as she squawks, both of them aware that he's not serious. Then, more gravity in his voice, "I know you're all good kids. But it's very easy to accidentally let something you know slip, or persuade someone to do something because you know what they're susceptible to now."

"Carl the Wise has spoken," Josh agrees. "But at least we know that he wasn't found in a ditch."

"What is your obsession with the ditch!" North shrieks. "Shut up about the ditch!"

* * *

"Hank, is it alright if I send some pictures over text?"

"Mmm? Yeah, yeah, go for it."

"It costs money. Fourteen cents per picture, I believe."

"I think we can handle a few of those, son."

"Thank you." Noticing that his dad's eyes are sliding out of focus more often than not, Connor grabs the remote and pauses the episode just before it goes to autoplay the next. "You should go to bed, Hank."

His dad blinks at him blearily before he processes the words. "Aw, shit. What's my life coming to when I'm taking orders from a brat," he grumbles good-naturedly, before shoving himself off the sofa and stretching. More than a few of his sockets click and Connor cringes at the sound. "Sorry I couldn't stay awake for longer. Jeez, how long's it been, an hour?" Sumo, deep in his REM cycle, twitches and bats his fox toy onto the floor.

"I don't like watching more than three episodes," Connor says truthfully. "I get overwhelmed by all of the plot. And sometimes my cheeks start to hurt from laughing at the comments you make."

Hank's face goes soft around the edges, smile warm and liquid-y, for reasons Connor can't identify. "You coming to bed too?"

"I'm going to take Sumo out for a run," Connor decides, "after I send my plan to Markus. I'll be about half an hour most likely. No more than forty-five minutes."

"I'll wait up." Hank claps his hand onto Connor's shoulder as he walks by, then pauses and lets it stay there, warmth seeping from the palm through his T-shirt and seeping into his skin. There is no purpose to this, other than affection and comfort. Connor accepts this purpose - he may go as far to say that he even appreciates it.

Hank wanders off to his room, yawning and muttering to himself about getting old the whole way, while Connor makes quick work of stacking the empty mugs in the dishwasher and cleaning both the dining table and coffee table with an anti-bacterial spray - carefully chosen by Connor as having the highest success rate while not smelling like a chemical leak - and cloth. With all spills and stains soaked up and wiped away, he dries it with another cloth and then puts everything back in the kitchen neatly.

Sumo watches balefully as he spreads his notes out on the dining table - it has an overhead light, much better for photos than the coffee table or any of the kitchen counters - and steps up onto a chair in socked feet, phone in hand. He nearly slips on the wooden seat as he tries to find the best angle, one that doesn't have his shadow pervading half of the image. There - he snaps three photos, one of each individual page, then turns them over and takes three more of the backs. He checks them for quality before attaching them to an empty text message in the order that they should be read.

Compose message to: Markus Manfred

Here are the plans - please let me know if you can't understand anything, or if you need more zoomed in pictures. Perhaps we could meet tomorrow during a break or free period to talk it over? - Connor

ATTACHED: 6 FILES

Closing the messaging app, he flicks up from the bottom of the screen and turns on the do not disturb mode. He plugs his headphones in, opens up Spotify, and loads up his running playlist. "Sumo," he calls. The dog wakes up immediately, as if he wasn't asleep so deeply that they'd had to double the volume on the TV to drown out his snores, and then perks up when he sees the headphones in Connor's hands. "Yes, clever boy! We're going out!" Oh, classical conditioning is a fine thing.

Sumo makes his way over slowly, wagging his tail heedfully. All the signs are pointing towards a walkies, but his lead hasn't been presented to him yet, and sometimes the humans take their headphones when they're going out without him. Better not to get his hopes up and then have them dashed, say his lowered eyes and slow gait.

Connor can't deal with the love he has for Sumo sometimes. Most of the time. All of the time.

The dog watches him through stubby eyelashes as he approaches the Sumo shelf by the door. While it has his leads, hanging on hooks just underneath it, as well as his harness and the toys that are reserved for playing fetch outside, it also houses Connor's hat and gloves. Still, Sumo's tail wags a little harder when Connor approaches it, and even harder still when he grabs his beanie and shoves it on over his hair, but he still waits with his ears pricked up from anticipation. "Sumo, come over here."

The massive dog crosses the space between them in two bounds, and then displays just what a good boy he is by tanding serenely as Connor positions the harness over his torso and then secures it. It has three clasps around the front and then, due to Sumo's boisterous nature and strength, eight more along the length of his chest, all of which have to be locked together and then adjusted to the right tautness. He slides the third lead along off its hook - medium length and fluorescent - and attaches it to the loop on Sumo's harness, then pulls the loop of the handle over his wrist. "I'm going, Hank," he shouts, and plugs one earbud in while Sumo dances from one paw to the other, his admirable self-restraint started to chafe around the edges.

Hank's head appears around his bedroom door. "Call me if you're going to be any longer," he says, then he makes an expression between a moue and a lour. "What the fuck is that hat, Connor? You look really fuckin' strange. You look like you've got no ears and no hair. You look like a bad undercover cop."

Connor isn't about to take fashion advice from the man who thinks bright orange, psychedelic prints will 'never go out of style'. "You know what's not strange? My preservation of heat that will lead to me not getting hypothermia and being found naked in a pile of snow." Sumo, with impeccable timing, makes a low boof in his throat.

Hank shakes his head and ducks back into his room without another word, but Connor isn't fooled. He saw the small smile on the older man's face. Hank can't fool him, he is the Emotion Master.

Oh, Markus has texted back. He'll just slap a nice big old label of IGNORE on that for now so he doesn't have to deal with the feelings that's stirring up.

He hits shuffle. Heavy metal blasts out. "Let's go walkies, Sumo." At the word, Sumo goes bonkers, like he didn't know he was going out already from all the other clues, and paws at the door like a firefighter breaking down a door with an axe. Connor opens the door to let him out and almost gets his arm yanked off for the trouble as the Saint Bernard lunges out.

The door slams behind them, despite Connor's best efforts to close it softly.

"Sumo - Sumo, wait ," he says sternly, as he nearly trips over the uneven paving stone outside their house thanks to the dog trying to haul him forward. Reluctantly, Sumo reels himself in and trots on the spot while Connor stretches out his legs briefly. "Let's go, then." They set off at their normal pace - a speed that they tend to average at 5.4 MPH, according to his fitness app's data.

As they run, Connor finds his thoughts straying from their analysis of the music he listens to, and observations of the world around them, and shifting into an unusually somber perusal of his own personality instead. While this is usually his time for winding down and relaxing, his mind seems to be running faster than he is, and he doesn't have a solution to make it quieten down other than to let it whir away.

Sumo has a fairly simple psychology. He knows what he likes, and he knows what he doesn't. When he likes something, he asks for it, or he seeks it, and if it's offered to him he accepts it. When he doesn't like something, he doesn't ask for it, or he doesn't seek it, and if it's offered to him he refuses it. The few things that fall in between don't bother him for longer than they exist in close proximity to him - the vacuum cleaner is too loud for him but he also likes to play with it, so he compromises by darting in and out of whichever room it's in, and as soon as it's been put back into the cleaning cupboard he promptly forgets it exists.

In a way, Connor supposes, he is doing much of the same. He likes watching TV with Hank, and running with Sumo, so he actively seeks out these opportunities. He doesn't like loud crowded areas, and public speaking, so he actively avoids those opportunities. He's not sure how he feels about Markus, so he talks to him sporadically and refuses to acknowledge any emotions. It's very healthy.

But at the same time, he is very different to Sumo. Sumo's relationship with the vacuum cleaner can be easily described and understood: he enjoys its presence because it moves apparently of its own accord, in reality jerked around by the cord that Hank or Connor is using to clean, and this means it is an interesting playmate; but on the flipside, he doesn't enjoy its presence because it is too loud and more than once has moved too abruptly for him to figure out where it's going before it's there.

Connor doesn't know how he feels about Markus, but that's not because he has a positive and negative aspect to the relationship. It's more that he just doesn't know , which paradoxically makes the whole thing infinitely more simple and more complicated.

Connor does not feel emotions the same way as others; this isn't a mournful expression of teenage angst, or dramatic statement about how edgy he is. He is aware of this fact in the same way that someone is aware they have a headache, or that they are wearing shoes. It is not always conscious, but it is a fact. He is able to identify emotions only by their autonomous physical characteristics. When he smiles that means he is happy. When he laughs that means he is even happier. When he frowns that means he is sad. When he cries that means he is even sadder. Some emotions are more in between, but they are not very strong so it is fine that he can't identify them.

Sometimes he is aware of a feeling, but not because he feels it. He looks at Hank, he looks at Sumo, he looks at one of his favourite books; and suddenly he is aware that he loves what he is looking at. He doesn't feel the love, he doesn't feel the rush or swell of affection as most people seem to do. Similarly, when he looks at a crowded area that he has to enter, or knows he is about to undergo a social interaction, suddenly he is aware that he is feeling dread, but he does not feel the dread itself.

Anxiety brings roiling snakes in his stomach and a sensation of nausea, sometimes the feeling that he's going to faint. Deep sadness brings a tangible, physical pain to his chest. Shame brings heat to his skin and bile to his throat.

Happiness brings nothing. But the absence of the bad emotions is, in itself, a good feeling. Good emotions bring nothing, bad emotions bring something.

And this is where the problem lies with Markus. Because with Markus, Connor does not feel nothing - so this means he is feeling something bad. But he does not feel snakes or nausea or pain in his chest or heat under his skin or bile in his throat. Markus brings an entirely new feeling to him, and he can't identify it, but it is strong.

Markus defies every single rule that Connor has ever had about his emotions.

Sometimes, with Markus, Connor does feel heat rushing to his skin, but he doesn't taste any bile rising in his throat, so he knows it's not shame. Sometimes, he gets a tangible, physical feeling in his chest, but it's not painful - just heavy, if he had to fish about for a word to describe it as best he could. Sometimes he feels like he's going to faint, but he doesn't feel nauseous or get snakes. He has a little bit of everything and not enough of anything.

He looks down at Sumo, running alongside him. The dog is galloping happily, sniffing the air, careering sideways in an irregular route so his paws get to sample both the grass and the tarmac. He looks down at himself. His legs run in an obedient straight line, never straying from the tarmac.

He runs faster. When he skips the next song that comes on, his lockscreen tells him that he is now running at 6.2 MPH.

Thirty-one minutes and seventeen seconds later - Connor likes to make sure he is getting at least the daily recommended amount of exercise so every workout is tracked - they arrive back home. 115 Michigan Drive is just a house to every person in the world but two.

Sumo, panting, stands restlessly but unstirring as his eleven clasps are undone and he is declothed. He pads in through the door when it's opened for him, noticeably slower than his last exit, and immediately gulps down half of his 2.25 gallon capacity water bowl.

Connor leaves the door open behind him for Sumo's final bathroom run - he's got enough road sense not to wander out of the garden, and enough common sense to realise that running away would be stupid when he gets treated so well here - and sheds his hat, hangs up the harness and lead, and winds his headphones carefully so that they won't become tangled before their next walk. Sumo trots outside to do his business, and Connor fills up his water bowl in the meantime. On average, dogs drink between fifty and sixty millilitres of water per kilogram of bodyweight per day, which means that Sumo, at his current weight of seventy-seven kilograms, should be drinking between three thousand, eight hundred and fifty millilitres (three point eight five litres) and four thousand, six hundred and twenty millilitres (four point six two) a day. The water bowl holds about eight and a half litres, and it needs refilling every day. The vet assured them that it was fine that Sumo tended to drink most of the bowl, because he did a lot of exercise, and some dogs were just more thirsty than others anyway. Connor decides to keep an eye on it still. Excessive drinking can be a sign of kidney disease.

He checks that the back door is locked, and all of the windows are closed. When he returns, Sumo has trotted back in, and he closes and locks the front door. Everything is as routine as always. Connor feels nothing, so this means he is happy. Sumo is wiggling slightly, which means he is happy.

Then he remembers that he has an unread text from Markus, and he gets a bit of heat under his skin and feels a little bit like he's going to faint, so this means he is ?

New message from: Markus Manfred

This is amazing Connor! I'd never have been able to make something like this, you must have worked so hard on it! I love your ideas too, how did you think of some of that stuff? I'm free periods 2 and 7 tomorrow if you are, and if not I haven't got anything on at break or lunch. Let me know! -Markus :)

Compose message to: Markus Manfred

Thank you, Markus. I could say the same about your artwork, and I'm sure you're much better at English than you're claiming. I am also free period 2 tomorrow, would you like to meet in the library? -Connor

Whatever Connor is feeling, it seems to be making him slightly daring, enough that he opens up a new text before he can second-guess himself.

Compose message to: Markus Manfred

Also - goodnight, Markus. Sleep well. -Connor

Oh God. What has he done. When will someone stop his sinful ways. He needs to be taken out before he does any more damage with his rampant, over-the-top friendliness -

New message from: Markus Manfred

The library is good, I'll see you there tomorrow period 2! And seeing as you have the pleasure of doing this project with me, I guess you'll be able to judge my English skills...goodnight to you too Connor, have good dreams. -Markus :)

Everything's fine.

He shouldn't reply, right? They'd just end up in a cycle of wishing each other goodnight and progressively more uncomfortably personal wishes about dreams. Better to pretend he didn't check his phone again and start over tomorrow morning with a casual greeting. Wait - he doesn't need to message him in the morning, they're meeting in the library. Does he want to talk to Markus? Is this unknown ? actually...the desire to have a friend?

Disgusting. He needs to sleep.

"Goodnight, Hank," he calls as he pads down the hallway. Sumo follows faithfully at his heels until Connor steers towards the bathroom. He peels himself away and pushes Connor's ajar door open fully and from the muffled thump, presumably jumping onto his bed and settling himself down squarely in the middle.

As Connor washes his face and brushes his teeth in the bathroom, the final list of what to do before he goes to sleep pops up in his head like an ordered list in his vision. Put phone on to charge. Make sure the alarm is on. Open the window so Sumo doesn't get too hot. Change into pyjamas - put dirty clothes in the hamper. Turn on the bedside lamp. Turn off the main lamp. Shove Sumo to one side of the bed and climb in while ignoring his grumbles. Settle, then allow Sumo to curl himself back against Connor so he's touching him as much as possible. Turn off the bedside lamp. Sleep.

Sleep doesn't come easy most nights. That night is no exception.

* * *

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated and makes me very happy! :D


	3. come too far to pretend that we don't

it hasn't been an entire year since i last updated so you know what, I'm counting that as progress my dudes. how are you all? i hope you're well! i love you al much, thanks for reading my story(ies) and sticking with me even when i'm an inconsistent little goblin.

also, major thanks to MoonlitLagoon for beta'ing this for me and my friend Alice for reading this over and repeatedly telling me that it was good trash, you are both angels and will be receiving nine eggs as payment soon

on with the chapter!

* * *

Physics is one of Connor's favourite subjects for its simplicity. While his classmates moan and grumble about how much it doesn't make any sense, it actually makes a lot of sense. Every question they are given has an answer, one that can be found using equations, and calculations, and just things that generally have a solid ground upon which to stand. It may take several equations, and it may also require a lot of thought to determine in which order they need to be used, but the fact remains: the answer is out there.

It makes a lot more sense than feelings.

 **Question 1:**

 _The weight of a box on the Earth is 80 N. What is the weight of the box on the moon if the moon has 1/80th the mass and 1/4th the radius of the Earth?_

Do I like Markus?

 _C. 16 N._

Unclear.

 **Question 2:**

 _A horizontal spring-block oscillator is in motion when a second block of equal mass falls on top of the oscillating block. If the two blocks stick together, what effect will this have on the amplitude of the oscillations?_

Does Markus like me?

 _D. It would depend on where the original block was in its cycle when the second block fell._

Unclear.

 **Question 3:**

 _If the force of gravity between the Moon and the Earth were to stop, which statement best describes the resulting motion of the moon?_

How do I find out if I like Markus?

 _B. It would continue rotating on its axis, but it would stop revolving around the Earth._

Unclear.

 **Question 4:**

 _A ball of mass is attached to a string connected to the ceiling, forming a pendulum. When the string is raised to an angle of 50 degrees below the horizontal (the ceiling) and released, the ball swings back and forth with a period of 0.4 s. Which of the following changes to the pendulum would decrease the period of the pendulum?_

If I do have feelings for Markus, will life as I know it explode?

 _B. Decreasing the length of the string._

Unclear.

 **Question 5:**

 _Three light bulbs, each with a resistance of R, are connected in parallel to a battery in a simple circuit. If the middle bulb goes out, then..._

What if I do like Markus, and I confess to him, and then he makes fun of me and I'm so humiliated I have to leave the country and assume a new identity?

 _D. The bulbs will stay on, and the current will decrease._

Unclear.

 **Question 6:**

 _A beam of monochromatic light entering a glass window pane from the air will experience a change in..._

What are emotions and why must they exist?

 _C. Speed and wavelength._

Unclear.

 **Question 7:**

 _An ideal battery of constant voltage V supplies current to a circuit that has total resistance R. If R is doubled, what will happen to the total power dissipated by the circuit?_

Why don't I understand my own mind?

 _C. It will be halved._

Unclear.

"Connor, you alright?"

Connor blinks away from the textbook to discover his pen has stabbed through several pages of his jotter pad, bleeding delicate swirls of black ink over the faint grey lines. "I'm fine, Miss Chen," he says before he's even really registering that he's talking. "I was just thinking about this problem a bit too hard."

His Physics teacher nods. "Try not to murder your paper again," she says easily, "and let me know if you need any help, yeah?" She smiles at him, friendly but slightly strained as the background noise of the classroom increases, and then heads off to wrangle Carlos Ortiz and his band of friends into doing at least one of the questions they've been set.

He wasn't technically lying. He is thinking too hard about a problem, but it's just not question 8 on page 137. It's the usual issue he has of knowing he has a social event heading his way and having absolutely no clue about how to go about handling it. And the stakes are much higher for this one than usual; this is like a championship game compared against a friendly practice match. Connor thinks so, anyway. He doesn't play sports, so all of his knowledge comes from PE and occasional snatches of Hank's basketball games.

He's meeting Markus in the library for second period, which they both have free. He's got - he checks the clock, and then his watch to make sure that the clock hasn't frozen - twenty-seven minutes before the bell will ring.

Should he get to the library early, so he can be sitting at a table before Markus gets there? Then he can choose the optimum table and be pretending to do work, so Markus willhave to walk over and initiate contact first. But what if Markus is there already and sees him arrive, out of breath and frenzied , and thinks he's really weird? So he should go late...but then that might look like he doesn't care. He'll get there at a normal time then. _But what is a normal time?_ They get a three minute break in between classes to go to their lockers and get to class; if he gets to the library just after those three minutes, it will look like he's not rushing but not loitering either. _Perfect._

It will take forty-five seconds to get to his locker, thirty seconds to change out his books, another minute to get to the library from there. That's only two minutes and fifteen seconds - he needs another forty-five seconds to a minute. If he takes the east stairwell - that will add on thirty seconds at his normal speed-walking pace, nearly a minute if he takes it slow - maybe pretend to be checking his phone as he goes in case anybody sees him and wonders why he's moving so leisurely.

Well, that's the easy part planned. Now he has to figure out the hour _after_ his arrival.

"Alright, everyone," Miss Chen calls from the front of the classroom, "let's go through the questions."

Or not.

Even if he wanted to turn his brain off - because he doesn't want to sound braggadocious, but he's never gotten a question in Physics incorrect - he wouldn't be able to, because now everyone is murmuring and putting their hands up and taking notes and there are too many little noises fluttering in the air around him, invading his ears, for him to be able to actually focus his mind on anything much.

* * *

Late out of class by a minute; he can cut the east staircase out of his plans and just go the normal, faster way. The crowds are thinner than usual - there's a field trip with the juniors today, he remembers - so he gets to his locker ten seconds earlier than he had planned, but he uses that ten seconds helping Anna - his locker neighbour - spin her combination dial; one of her arms is in a cast (sailing accident, she says) and the other one is clutching all of her books in a precarious embrace.

Everything is fine. He will get to the library on time. Markus won't think he's weird - but why does he care what Markus thinks? Does he care because he _likes_ Markus? Or does he care because he doesn't want to be a social outcast?

Argh, feelings!

Connorwaits for a gaggle of giggling sophomores to pass, one of them clutching a phone like a lifeline and the others all crowding her as they walk, looking and gasping at the screen - oh, from that brief accidental glance it looks like she had a penis on her screen, lovely - and then weaves and navigates his way through the crowds. A small harem of cheerleaders clutching letter jackets like passports at an airport, two girls berating another for her choice of eyeshadow, jocks punching each other's arms and slapping each other's backs. Nothing that Connor can't handle.

He steps out of the way of a harried girl - Sara, he thinks - rushing down the corridor with a satchel slung over each shoulder and a stack of tupperware in her hands, all of which rattle ominously as she runs past him with a shouted _thank you_. Connor just hopes they aren't full of rotten teeth like the last time he saw her.

As soon as he tries to step back out into the flow of people - less than a minute to get to the library, he's still fifty seconds away - he hears someone say, "Oh, Connor!" and turns around to find an enthusiastic North only a few inches away from his face. "Sorry," she says breezily when they nearly collide, and takes half a step back. "Thought I'd grab you while I saw you." She jerks her head to the lower half of a body protruding from the locker next to her. "Markus will be ready to go in a minute."

That is indeed Markus's butt.

Hang on. Why does he know that? Delete, Connor, delete. Forget you ever knew this information.

"Thanks," he manages to say to North, who is staring at him with an expression that reminds him of both a bushbaby and a shark.

"What do you have next period?" he asks politely, for the sake of something to say so he isn't tempted to look at Markus's...assets...again.

"A free, like you." North leans back against her locker, kicking a heel up against the metal with a clang. "I need to go find a good book about arson, so I figured I'd go up to the library with you guys."

"Oh, is that for a project?"

"No. I just feel like setting things on fire a lot. It's a good evening activity, you know? Not too strenuous, no blue light before bedtime…" She seems deadly serious.

"Can you not look online?" If North is being serious, then she will see that he is also being serious, and appreciate that. If she is being sarcastic but in a deadpan sort of way, she will think that Connor is being sarcastic but in a deadpan sort of way. She will appreciate that too. This is a clear win-win for Connor. Take that, universe.

"Lots of liars on the internet. Saw some buffoon saying that smokeless gunpowder couldn't be traced after a fire. That's a fucking lie, you know. Can't trust anyone."

"What a buffoon," Connor says gravely. Then, "You seem very knowledgeable. Are you sure you need a book?"

"There's always more to learn, especially about arson."

Markus emerges from his locker, looking vaguely sweaty and more than vaguely attractive. Objectively, from a scientific point of view. "North, stop talking about arson to a cop's son."

"Connor ain't no snitch," North insists.

"That's a double negative, which would actually make me a snitch," Connor feels the need to point out.

"Is that a confession?" Her eyes have suddenly gone several shades darker. Connor isn't sure whether she's being serious or not again.

"North," Markus warns, going to put a pencil behind his ear and failing when he discovers that there is already a pencil there. "Please don't intimidate my partner."

"Connor knows I'm joking. Don't you, Connor?"

"I do now," Connor says honestly, and is surprised by how genuinely pleased he is when North squeals with laughter. Over her shoulder, Markus is grinning, looking between them both with an equally fond expression.

The moment is broken when - "Hey," Josh calls, heading towards them with a purposeful stride, "when you hear the words 'take out', what do you immediately think? I thought of Franz Ferdinand, Simon said 'food'."

"Hitman," North says immediately.

"I think of a date," says Markus, then turns to Connor expectantly.

In a blind panic, Connor blurts, "All three. If you're not a coward."

Silence. Connor panics more. He's just called them cowards and acted like a damn fool-

"I'm adopting Connor," North announces. "Connor, can you do winged eyeliner?"

"I've never tried...so I can't _not_ do it." Connor hopes this is the correct answer. North looks delighted and cackles to herself quietly. Connor surmises that he must have said the right thing both times, and catalogues a little file in his mind called 'What North Likes'. In it, he slots three notes: 'murder', 'winged eyeliner', and 'earnest replies'. What a wide range of interests! Oh, 'arson', too. The Christmas present is practically planning itself.

* * *

Anyone who makes North laugh so easily and genuinely - and in public, at that - is clearly either a demigod or employing the use of dark magic. Connor is far too pure to summon ghosts, goblins or demons, so it must be the former.

He doesn't have to worry about Connor winning over his friends, at least - North would have always been the hardest to impress, but she's completely enchanted by his - ugh, it sounds so juvenile to call it a crush, but it is a crush, he supposes. It's better than he'd hoped for, even if she does seem to alternate rapidly between cooing over him like a mother hen and reconsidering her own sexuality.

The warning bell trills in the background - a minute until they need to be in class - but North is still cackling while Josh and Simon make fun of her, and Connor looks adorably bemused - so Markus feels like it's his duty to say something - maybe something along the lines of 'Well, let's be off to the library then my good fellows, how about it?" - when he realises that North is no longer cackling. Instead, she's looking at Connor, and she's looking at Connor like she's going to devour him, so Markus looks at North to tell her to stop, but then out of the corner of his eye he realises that Josh is looking at him quizzically, so Markus looks back at him, except he took too long and now Josh has moved onto looking at North, so Markus goes back to her too, and then he sees that Simon is looking at Connor, so he tries to catch _his_ eye instead - but now North has stopped looking at Connor and is looking at Markus, so he looks back at her and she holds his gaze just long enough to make some kind of point that he doesn't understand before looking back to Connor - but this time her expression is less like a lioness about to pounce on a wounded gazelle and more like a lioness with her cub, so that's fine (probably?) - but now Josh is looking at Connor, and Connor is looking between all of them quizzically and then Simon looks to Markus and then North looks to Josh and Josh looks to Simon and _Jesus Christ it's like I'm in the Twilight Zone_ so Markus slams his locker door shut to break the moment.

"Class?" he enquires. North looks gleeful, for some reason. Markus doesn't trust it. Or her, generally.

Dispersion goes fairly smoothly - North and Josh walk into each other as they try to go their separate ways, then both of them try to step out of the other's way but end up going in the same direction and blocking each other again, which continues for several rounds before Simon physically pulls Josh in the opposite direction to break the cycle before they miss next period orNorth commits murder, but that''s about three altercations fewer than they usually have between classes, so Markus counts it as a victory.

Also a victory - Connor goes up the stairs in front of him, and he _has_ to look where he's going so he doesn't fall down the concrete stairs and crack his head open and then gush his brains all over the steps which will obviously stain and then his legacy won't be his vigilante work or art or even the explosion he caused, but instead students going 'hey, did you know that some dude fell down these stairs and his brains went, like, _everywhere_?' which is kind of awesome but also not his life's dream - anyway, he has to look where he's going, and where he's going is basically the same place as Connor's butt, so for once it's socially acceptable for him to be creepily staring at said butt, but before he can get too smug about it they're in the library and North is subtly elbowing him in the side to break him out of his ass-induced trance. That's what friends are for. Breaking the ass-trance.

"I'm going to find my arson books," she announces, and flounces off with a lot more pizzazz than usual, even fluffing her hair as she goes. Either the apocalypse is coming, or North has a crush on someone in the vicinity, but there are more pressing concerns right now.

Where should they sit?

"Where should we sit?"

* * *

Four words. Four words is all it takes to incite total fucking chaos inside Connor. Because, good question, Markus, where should we sit indeed?

Connor, by himself, would choose to lurk somewhere in the back. Like behind the bookshelves, or on the table that nobody likes to use because the light above it doesn't work - which is exactly why Connor likes it. No bright, fluorescent bulb glaring off his paper and textbook pages and giving him a headache. But if he suggests sitting over there, will Markus think he's strange? That he's some kind of loner who needs to be watched over lest he strides into school with an AK-47 in one hand and a shotgun in the other? Or will they just bond over their mutual hatred of the school's choice in lightbulbs?

If he opts for somewhere more conventionally sociable, he won't be able to focus on his work for the inane chatter and general hubbub that follows high-schoolers like BO and hormones. Then he'll look like some kind of idiotic clownfish whose tongue is too big for his mouth and brain is too small for his skull.

This is truly a nightmare. _Hell, thy name is Social Interactions._

What does Hank always say? Compromise. If you can't make a decision either way, split it down the middle and negotiate from there. He might have said that when he was explaining how a hostage situation had played out, but it's probably applicable to daily life as well.

So, "How about there?" Connor suggests, pointing to a table a few steps away. It's a short distance from the doors and the computers (where most of the noise seems to be), but something about it gives off the illusion of privacy, which should be enough to trick his brain into thinking they're not in a highly crowded very noisy very bright very overwhelming space ahhhh now he's thinking about it-

"Sounds good," Markus says brightly, moving towards the space without a second thought (as opposed to Connor's at least seven thousand).

Oh, to be a neurotypical.

Markus is already set up by the time Connor has chosen a seat (next to him? Opposite him? Diagonally opposite him? In the end he drags the opposite chair round to the other side of the table so that they're on either side of the same corner. Markus doesn't comment on this, it must be okay) with a spiral-bound notebook, several coloured pens, and a stubby pencil. "I thought I'd try to be organised," he offers sheepishly when he sees Connor looking. "But all of my pencils are for drawing so I had to borrow this one off North. I think she deliberately gave me the worst one she had." He frowns, apparently more to himself than to Connor. "Our friendship is strange."

"You don't have to be organised," Connor points out. "Some people just don't work that way. The terms 'extrovert' and 'introvert' were actually first used to refer to two different types of people and their methods of problem solving. Introverts turn inwards for inflection and solve problems by themselves, while in contrast, extroverts like to bounce ideas off of other people and discuss their problems. It's only recently that the terms turned into colloquialisms and are now used to describe whether somebody is shy or out-going."

He pulls out his own supplies and sets them down one by one. Spiral-bound notebook, and a pencil case, only just able to zip up when it's full; from that, he finds one of nine black biros, one of three mechanical pencils, a ruler, an eraser, and a yellow highlighter. "Besides, I think I have enough organised for the both of us." When he looks back up to make eye contact (a social norm, should be made once every few sentences at minimum), Markus's gaze is suddenly very intense. "Maybe too much organised." He glances away, the mismatch of blue and green almost painful in their fervor. Without thinking about it, he's put everything out in neat little lines, aligned at perfect right angles with each other. Too much organised, indeed.

When he looks back up, Markus's eyes don't seem so intense anymore. Neither are his words - but they're also not intense enough. Connor does the same sometimes, when emotions are too strong to be released; he pretends that he's feeling near to nothing. "I don't think I've ever had a system in my life, for anything." Markus clears his throat, continuing, "I think that's why I like art so much - I can get all my ideas out in whatever form I want, and it still looks beautiful despite how messy it all is."

"I think your art is amazing," Connor says honestly. "All of it, the abstract stuff and the neater stuff...all of it is really good." He means it. He's seen a lot of it at school exhibitions: vague sketches that don't really seem to make anything but are still something; bold paintings that evoke clear, strong emotions; delicate watercolours that inspire calm as you look at them; perfectly shaped lines of charcoal that come together to illustrate his family, his friends, the world around him. Connor has spent longer than he would ever admit looking at them, reading the simple titles and short descriptions next to them: 'A portrait of Dad', 'The view from the window', 'The feeling of waking up to see the sunset and hear the birds singing'.

Markus smiles, but it doesn't look right. It's a sad smile, one of those contradictions that Connor has never been able to understand. "Thank you. My art is basically my life. I would never exchange it for anything, but sometimes...I think if I could trade in a few thoughts about art for some about organisation, I'd make the deal." He's picked up a pen at some point and is deftly transferring ownership of it between the fingers of his left hand, spinning it and twirling it and occasionally tapping it against his nails. The movement is hypnotic, but Markus seems...rueful, is the only word that seems to match when Connor rifles through his internal dictionary (it's very helpful, it has pictures next to all of the words so he can cross-reference). Rueful that he isn't organised, which is baffling to Connor.

Connor can't even imagine fully what it would be like to live without the constant need for a plan, a deep-seated urging inside of him to have something in place for every possible outcome. Even getting up in the morning has to be a routine - for most people it's rolling out of bed and barely remembering everything they need to do because they're still half-asleep, no thoughts running through their head - but for Connor, it's a carefully established schedule, one that's taken years to perfect and is the most efficient it can be, using the least amount of time to complete the most number of tasks. And yes, that's all very good - in fact, most people would love to be so organized in the morning - but it isn't just the morning, it's every part of his life, and one slight wobble, the tiniest hindrance that wouldn't even be noticed by other people for how insignificant it is, will cause hours, maybe even days, of agony and anxiety for him.

If he got up and the shower wasn't working, he can't just think, 'Better slap on some extra deodorant and find the dry shampoo,' he has to find a quiet, dark place to sit and plan his new contingency. If Sumo decided that he didn't want a walk one morning, he couldn't just shrug and get on with the rest of his routine early; he would worry and worry and worry that Sumo was ill, and spend the hour allocated to his walk time just doing nothing, because that's better than disrupting the schedule. And _this_ is what Markus feels he is missing out on?

"Systems are overrated." Smile, so it seems like you're making a joke; look at me, I'm Connor, I'm light-hearted and humourous. Oh no. That smile was too tight, now Markus looks worried and intense again. Does he? Worry can be easily confused with concentration - furrow between the eyebrows, eyes slightly squinted, lips pressed together, analysing gaze…he could just be thinking hard about the project they'll soon be discussing, hopefully in the next sentence he speaks...

No such luck. "You know it's okay, to be like…" Markus, usually eloquent and articulate and able to charisma his way out of or into just about anything (including but not limited to persuading the captain of the bomb squad not to press charges after talking to a rather mouthy North), seems to be at a loss for words. Interesting. Does he find Connor intimidating? No, definitely not. Confusing? More likely. Connor commonly has this effect on people, and usually it's with Hank. "Like you... _are_ ," Markus finishes, flustered and so obviously exasperated by his own lack of vocabulary that even Connor can read it on his face like a big neon sign.

"What am I like?" Only after the words are already out does Connor realise how belligerent and argumentative he sounds, not least because his tone is flat and betraying no emotion. In the words of a great and wise man, _oh dang flabbit_. The room suddenly feels oppressively hot and devoid of breathable air. The noises from the others - tap-tap-tap on the keyboards, low murmuring, rustling of pages, the beeps as the librarians scan books - are amplified, pounding in his ears like a heartbeat. "I mean-"

"You're great," Markus blurts, then looks immediately confused and abashed. (Connor knows this combination well, it is how he feels after pretty much every interaction he hasn't prepared for, like the lady who suddenly popped out of a hedge when he was walking Sumo and started talking to him about hazelnuts.) Then his gaze ascends again, and there seems to be something in Connor's face that revives Markus's resolve, because his expression steels and his eyes become determined. The air in the room has returned to normal, someone's turned down the volume on the stereo of background noise. "I mean - no, that's what I mean. I mean that you're great. Like that Bruno Mars song." At Connor's blank silence and doubtless clueless expression, he elaborates by singing softly, " _Because you're amazing, just the way you are_...you know?"

Well, this isn't fair. He has the voice of - not an angel, Connor doesn't believe in them, more like - if the feeling Connor gets when he's really happy could be a sound, it would be Markus's singing voice. It's like Sumo on Halloween wearing his triceratops onesie combined with making Hank laugh added to the feeling of finishing a really good book and then realising there's a sequel already out so not only have you just had the satisfaction of finishing something amazing but you're not even sad that it's over because there's _more_ amazing - that's the feeling, and that's the sound of Markus's singing voice.

But in order to look like a normal human being (which is important, or his entire life could end), he needs to reply. "I don't know that song," he says in a carefully bland voice. "But I'll listen to it when I get home. I like music. Especially death metal. It's full of energy."

Markus looks bemused for a few moments. Connor understands - his youthful, somewhat goofy, poodle-like appearance is incongruent with music typically associated with Satan worshippers and heavily tattooed, heavily pierced, mosh-pitting men. He recovers admirably well, though, and says with no trace of surprise or confusion, "Yeah, you should. It's a good song. Bruno Mars is - well, he's not for everyone, but he has a few good songs. I think so, at least. Maybe you won't. But if you like the songs and not his voice, there are covers, you know. The Glee Cast did a few, if you ever watched that show." Markus rubs a hand over his head in an unusual show of diffidence. "I'm rambling now, please ignore me. Especially that last bit, about Glee."

"You'd rather talk about why you think I'm great?" Coy smile. Oh, coy - he's being coy! This is new. And he's even made Markus blush. Connor is killing it today. He should start a course on how to be coy. How to be Coy with Connor. Step one: fish for compliments, but give a little sultry smile while you're at it. Not too sultry, though, or your target may think you're a wanton slut, and that wouldn't do at all.

For a few seconds, Markus stutters - maybe his smile _was_ too sultry. He may have to cancel his course before it begins. Then he closes his mouth and draws in a deep breath, letting it out again slowly. Maybe this is the human version of turning a computer on and off again. "I just think that the way your brain works - or how I think it works, anyway, from what I've seen - I think it's great," Markus says slowly. Not a bad slow, though, not like he doesn't want to be there, or he thinks that Connor is stupid - the type of slow that means someone is determined not to trip over their own words because what they're saying is too important to be mangled. "It's _incredible_. Everything seems to be so neat and organised, and, and, in boxes, almost? Like you have your own filing system in there. That must take such a remarkable amount of brain power and skill. And I hate that my brain doesn't do that. It feels like my brain is just constantly screaming at me because there are fifty things going on at once, and it's not sorting any of them out."

"My brain feels like that too," Connor confesses. He doesn't want to say why, and he doesn't know _how_ to say it either, how to explain the sensation of being entirely overwhelmed by life itself and all of the noises and lights and sensations that come with it. Not just 'oh life is hard'; a much different, deeper dread that sits in the pit of his stomach and writhes like a knot of snakes trying to untangle themselves, because life is uncertain and anything could happen and _unpredictability is the bane of his existence_.

He needs to lighten the mood - Markus is looking all serious again, and despite the fact that the expression suits him very well, it could lead to further questioning. He needs to employ the most effective diversionary tactic that he has - the power of memes. "It's, um, like that comic strip - you know the one with the dog sitting at the table? And everything around it is on fire, and it's like, 'This is fine,' or something? That's what my brain feels like. All the time."

"Yes, that's exactly it!" Wow, Markus sure is getting excited over a meme. Or maybe over Connor? Well, he can dare to dream… "Maybe that's just life. Maybe life is just...on fire, all of the time, and our brains are the dogs sitting at the table with the cup of coffee."

"It doesn't matter whether your brain has its own filing system or if it's a dumpster on fire, it'll be a mess either way," Connor agrees. He's quite enjoying this - this _banter_ , almost, this little back-and-forth witty exchange they have going on. But then he realises - "Oh no, that's - sorry, Markus, that was really rude, I just said that-"

"That my brain was a dumpster on fire?" Markus laughs. "No offence taken, don't worry." Even though he's been forgiven, and Markus seems the furthest thing from offended, Connor still has the tight grip of a white-knuckled fist wrapped around his lungs. An iron corset of worry that Markus is pretending his feelings haven't been hurt.

"I'm sorry anyway." Connor slides his hands down his face, like he's going to be able to iron the mortification out of his skin. "I just keep using my shovels wrong, it's like I can't figure out how offensive something is before it's out of my mouth and then it's just _out there_ , and it's too late because it's just..." He waves vaguely at the air around them, imagining the ghosts of words floating like dust, dissipating as his fingers slice through them before they reform into their offensive block lettering.

"What?" is all Markus seems to be able to say. "Sorry...shovels?"

"Oh, it's this - this thing I have, it's stupid-" Markus is still staring, his eyes somehow encouraging him to carry on, which is a strange ability for eyes to have. "Every moment in life, you get shovels, right?" Markus nods. He still looks fairly baffled, but there's no going back now. "Every interaction you have with someone, everything you do, it gives you a shovel. And you can use the shovels to dig, but there are two ways to dig - you can dig out some of the good in you, and spread it around, or you can dig yourself further into a deep, dark pit."

Markus takes a moment to process what he's just been told - which is absolutely fair, given it was fairly bat-shit - but then he beams, looking for all the world like he's won the lottery, except he's already rich, so like he's been given eternal life, but actually two years ago Markus won a public speaking competition with an impassioned speech about how immortality is actually a curse rather than a blessing, so like - not the point. He looks thrilled.

"See!" He slaps the table; the sound ricochets around the library and attracts the glares of at least fifty students, and three stern elderly librarians. He mouths an apology, flashes a smile, and instantly the world melts around him because one of those looks from Markus Manfred could stop a world war. "This is what I mean - about your brain. Everything becomes...sorted, and logical, and you come up with things to explain everything around you!" Connor doesn't really understand what's going on, but it's okay, because Markus is still smiling and he's smiling _at him_. "Sorry, I hope that wasn't really patronising, but - the way your mind works is actually brilliant. It's just - argh!" A strange gesture - like he's miming an explosion with his hands. "It comes up with the most fantastic things, and I think it's great, and I hate that you can't see how great it is, and I wish I could make you see it, and...I'm going to shut up now."

"Probably for the best," and Connor hopes that his smile isn't as nervous as he feels. "Want to move onto the project?"

"Yes. Yes, please." Markus opens his notebook with a self-deprecating chuckle. "Oh, one more thing." Connor looks up expectantly. "Never tell North that I watched Glee. Well. _Watch_ Glee. I still watch it. But she would blackmail the hell out of me." He even checks over his shoulder that North isn't secreted in the shadows, eavesdropping on his darkest secret.

"I'll save it for a rainy day." Connor winks, instantly regrets it, and moves on, averting his eyes before he can see Markus's reaction to that abomination. "Anyway, feminism." He arms himself with a biro.

* * *

The background noises are still there, the mere fact that he's in public is irradiating his brain with anxiety; but his brain, for once, is peaceful, in a way it only ever is when he's by himself. Socialising with Markus, aside from the introductions and the occasional moment where he's caught off guard, is not the chore he expected it to be. It's not natural - it never is, nothing in life comes naturally to him whatsoever - but the frenetic consternation that constantly plagues him isn't as active as he'd expected. There's always a buzzing in his brain, thoughts jumping from neuron to neuron, _what if I do something wrong what if I make a mistake what if something bad happens_ , but working with Markus has quieted it down, soothed it to a faint humming.

Usually aware of time down to the minute, his brain subconsciously counting the ticks of a clock and mentally tallying up the seconds, Connor is disorientated when the bell rings, indicating the end of the period, without him being even vaguely aware that it's about to.

"Oh," is all he can say, confused. He hasn't spent the past few minutes planning his next actions, a situation he hasn't been in for years now. All around them, surrounding them like they're in the eye of a hurricane, people are chattering and moving, flurries and blurs and noises swirling round and round and round. Focus. _Focus_.

"Crap," Markus says mournfully, staring down at his notes. "I was just getting into the swing of things." He closes his notebook, now full of scribbled graphite notes (he never used his fineliners in the end), and shoves it into his bag with nary a care for where it ends up. _Can't relate_. "Uh, I'll text you tonight? To sort out when we can next meet up?"

Connor stares blankly, having forgotten what life itself is for a brief second in the chaotic miasma encompassing him, but then he remembers he needs to be a normal human and reboots his social functions by pinching his thigh under the table. The pain, the jolt to his nervous system, seems to do the trick. He begins gathering up his stationery, ready to slot it all into the right places in his bag. "Yes, sounds good. I look forward to it." Too formal? Probably, but Markus seems to thrive on over-zealousy and too muchness. It's practically his second language. Connor's nearly fluent in German, so that's not immediately compatible. "I'll see you around," he finishes. Vague and friendly, that's the foundation for how humans interact with each other.

North struts over to them, a book clutched to her chest. Connor can't make out the title from underneath her arm, but its cover is a bright teardrop flame over a black backdrop, so her quest seems to have been successful. "Ready to go, Manfred?"

"Yeah, uh - I was just going to ask: Connor, do you want to have lunch with us?" Markus fiddles with the strap of his bag, looking strangely shy. North, on the other hand, brightens about a thousand degrees and bounces on the balls of her feet. "We just sit at the benches outside, nothing special, but at some point North will attempt first degree murder, so that's something." North nods at his comment, looking proud of herself.

Connor finds himself smiling. Usually he has to tell himself to, figure out when it's socially appropriate and then move the muscles around his mouth, but with certain people - Hank, Sumo, and more frequently, Markus (and North) - it just happens naturally, without his permission or forethought. "That's very kind, and I would love to," he says honestly, "but I walk home at lunchtime to let Sumo out, so I can't."

"No worries," Markus says breezily - mayhaps too breezily, Connor doth think - and nudges North with his elbow. "Where are you next? We've got Chemistry in E block."

"Oh, I'm in the S block for World History, so I'll be going the opposite way." This makes him strangely disappointed and he is not about to analyse why just now, or possibly ever. "I'll see you around, then. It was nice to see you, North."

"Your presence is a present," North tells him, and then yanks Markus off towards the main doors, calling over her shoulder, "Stay pure, Connor."

Connor, for his part, heads in the opposite direction to take the back stairwell instead; as well as being a quicker way to get to the S block, it also has the advantage of fewer people and less noise. All the way down those stairs, along the corridors, even through the next lessons, up until he's walking home to let Sumo out and can put in his headphones to drown out his own mind in the screaming eddy of heavy metal, there's one thought replaying in his head on a loop - he can't like Markus, he has to stop liking Markus, nothing good will come of liking Markus, _stop liking Markus_.

* * *

somebody irl, upon discovering that i enjoy creative writing, told me that they could definitely see me 'sitting at a desk in fancy vintage clothes, scribbling away with a fountain pen and sipping from a cup of coffee'. aside from being very pretentious, it made me realise that some of you may have the a similar misconception, so let me reassure you that i am currently in bed, wearing a sports bra and sweatpants, hunched over my laptop like some kind of technology goblin and cursing because i spilt water all over myself while my dog's butthole looms large in my periphery.

also, thanks for reading! comments are my lifeblood if you want to drop one 3


	4. looking back, i see a setting sun

hey y'all, long time no see! only like, two months though, I'm improving.  
hope everyone's okay in this scary time! stay safe, social distance, wash your hands, look after your loved ones especially those who are vulnerable etc.  
gonna be real. this chapter has kicked my arse. I've been writing it since the last chapter went up and I'm still not happy with it. I think it's pretty shit but I also don't know if I could make it any better, so. here's some trash I guess!  
also, imma be 21 tomorrow. just yesterday I was 7. wtf

* * *

Sumo is already scrabbling at the other side of the door by the time he reaches it, nails catching at and no doubt peeling off the paint in his thrilled impatience. Connor struggles with the key for a few seconds, cursing it as it refuses to cooperate. He's been caught in an intense rivalry with the front door for several months now; half of the time the key refuses to fit in the lock properly, and the other half it will begrudgingly slot inside, but then refuses to perform a full turn to unlock the mechanism. The worst thing, though, is that nobody else has to wrestle with it like this. As soon as someone else appears, it's suddenly the most docile, well-behaved lock in history. "Maybe it doesn't like you because you're so fuckin' rough with it," Hank had posited after Connor tried to demonstrate his woes. "At least buy it dinner first." Then he'd come over and twisted the key with no effort, and the door swung open like Hank was Saint Peter commanding the gilded gates of Heaven. Connor had dropped the argument at that point, but only because Hank was clearly considering calling a psychiatrist.

A blurry lump of Saint Bernard greets him when he's finally wrestled the door open, knocking him onto his back with no ceremony and then trampling on his chest because why would humans feel the need to breathe when the great Sumo has blessed them with his presence? Connor wheezes and squirms until he's free from the majority of the crushing weight, two of his behemoth paws on his shoulders rather than his chest, and now his lungs can expand just that precious centimetre needed to sustain life.

"No, this is not good boy behaviour," he says sternly, if a little breathlessly, but all Sumo registers is 'good boy'. His tail wags even harder, the movement travelling up his body like a slinky. A wet nose nudges at Connor's ear, then his jaw, and then it's replaced by a tongue intent on lathing his face in slobber. "Sumo, get off," he tries, pushing at the dog ineffectually, but he's forced to shut his mouth when the dog's tongue wanders and they get worryingly close to French kissing territory. Fortunately, a few more licks leaves him satisfied that he's cleaned his human enough – or more likely, he's remembered that Connor has appeared to take him out for his midday walkies, and he galumphs back into the house with an imperious 'hurry up human' bark thrown in for good measure.

"You're so annoying," Connor grumbles, with absolutely no heat. He rights himself and steps inside to shrug his bag from his shoulder, dumping it by the shoe rack. It currently holds three pairs of Connor's shoes on the bottom rack, and one single shoe of Hank's on the top. The other half of the pair is on the floor behind the rack, and the other shoes that used to be scattered around the rack are currently nowhere to be seen.

He makes a quick note to look for them later – Sumo's bed might be a good starting point – and roots around in his jacket pocket for his earbuds. The walk to and from school is a maze of narrow shortcuts and twisting back alleys, and there's a high risk of bumping into someone as they come around a corner. He forsakes the music for that walk but it makes him feel naked. The thrumming that goes right down to his bones is a shield against the rest of the world, and going without it for even ten minutes leaves him vulnerable and with the beginnings, at the very least, of a headache. The walk he's about to take with Sumo is clearer, emptier, open. He can blast heavy metal to encase him in armour and get lost in the steady beat of his feet on the sidewalk and the sensation of his arm being yanked off by an overexcited, oversized, overweight mammoth. At least until a clump of flowers appears on the other side of the road, and Sumo must growl at it until the threat is contained.

"Aw, how cute!" people often coo as Sumo trots by on the street. If only they knew the truth.

"You're a menace," Connor informs the dog as he slips the harness over his head. Sumo blinks languidly at him, the laziness in his gaze betrayed only by the fervent vibration at the very tip of his tail. Playing hard to get, Hank would say. Learned behaviour that being still means his harness is put on quicker and therefore he gets to go walkies quicker, Connor would say.

Sumo's eyes are practically luminous when he sees Connor grab the plastic thrower and tuck a tennis ball into his pocket, like they haven't gone to play fetch at the same time every day for the past two years. The door refuses to lock four times, and reluctantly gives in on the fifth with an anguished groan.

The bulwark of thrashing guitars and pounding drums grounds him as they walk down to the end of the street, turn left, take the third right, and then the second left to get to the park. 'Park' being a fairly generous descriptor: it's a vaguely triangular patch of grass enclosed by tarmac paths leading to middle-class residential streets, but it's pretty big and nobody else tends to come by at this time of day. It also has bountiful shrubbery, which in Connor's experience has never been a bad thing.

"Ready, boy?" he asks, unclipping the lead and slinging it over his neck. Sumo boofs in response, staring fixedly at Connor's hand as it delves into his pocket. He starts his well-rehearsed tap dance when the tennis ball emerges, paws a-tippy-tapping on the grass, an adorable warm-up exercise.

Fetch with Sumo is one of his favourite things. Not just because of how happy it makes Sumo, though that's definitely a substantial part of it. Not just because of how cute Sumo looks when he goes racing after the ball, either, legs transformed into a smudge of motion and ears streaming like flags, the pounce as he grabs the ball, the joyful madness in his eyes as he comes galloping back with slobber flecking out of the sides of his mouth. Those factors are probably most of the reason why fetch is so great, but Connor also appreciates the mindlessness of it all. Scoop up the ball with the thrower, pull back, release. Wait for Sumo to come racing back and drop it, tell him he's a good boy, repeat. It takes next to no thought, and it's repetitive, which means that his mind can wander. But thanks to that little bit of concentration it does require, and the soothing pattern of the same action over and over and over, it never wanders out of control. Which is the best kind of wandering.

The fifteen minutes of fetch each day allows him to sift through his brain; _sort this, forget that, I should remember to do this, I can file that bit away, I'm anxious about this, I need to work out a solution tonight._ It's like when he closes all of the background apps on his phone and he can almost feel the device thanking him for the sudden quiet. Or at least it used to be, back when his worries were simple, linear. One issue would lay itself out like a straight line of train tracks: uninterrupted, non-diverting, point A point B point C.

Recently, all of his anxieties have been multi-faceted and layered and just…complicated. They seem to be centred around feelings, Markus, or his feelings towards Markus. The latter category has been deemed too troublesome for its own good, and stubbornly, consciously, deliberately ignored. The former two have been…harder to push away. Emotions are foolish things and often Connor chooses to relegate them to the bin, but recently they've been refusing to stay there – they've been climbing back out like some kind of hideous, mutated beast and forcing their way back into his attention with sharp, grimy talons, chipping away at his defences and jeering at him for it.

His emotions, too, have become more complex. Similarly, they're piling on top of each other; layers upon layers of different feelings that shouldn't belong together and interlace so he can't even separate them to make sense of them. Not that he particularly wants to, but if they're going to force their way into his life, they could at least have the decency to form a single-file line and not all crowd in demanding his attention at once. Rude.

And then there's the Markus of it all. Everyone in his life is stored in a filing cabinet, of sorts, with their corresponding name and label. There's _Hank – father, Sumo – friend, Detective Reed – unpleasant acquaintance_ , and recently _North – friend?_ has appeared too, but Markus is just…Markus. Literally. His folder is just _Markus – Markus._

More than that, as if it weren't already problematic enough, he's found himself being increasingly troubled with how he appears around the other teenager. He isn't concerned with his presentation - aside from being presentable enough to attract nothing more than the standard passing glance, while also being bland and uninteresting enough to elicit no further consideration. He wears straight-cut, black jeans every day with a similarly inconspicuous shirt, and smooths his hair down from its natural curls – people look at him longer if he doesn't. Hank suggested they were trying to figure out why someone was wearing a poodle as a hat. Connor had ignored this suggestion.

He also doesn't particularly care for how others perceive his personality. He might be anxious when he has to interact with fellow humans, but that's doubtlessly due to his lack of control over the situation, rather than any self-esteem or self-consciousness.

Yes, Connor is aware that he has deep-seated control issues, as many neglected and/or abandoned and/or abused children develop. No, he is not going to do anything to "fix" them, because – and Connor is well aware of the irony of this – he has _control_ over the issue. The issue being his control issues. It's all very fun and witty, Connor's head is a splendid place to be.

But with Markus – all of that goes to shit as quickly as Pompeii on volcano day. It's not just because he's a new – friend? North is also a new friend (?) and he's still perfectly agreeable being himself around her. She seems to enjoy it too, which is a nice bonus.

But when he's talking to Markus – or just _existing_ in a space vaguely near to him – he finds himself second-guessing every action and every word and every gesture. Does Markus think he's weird? Will Markus think he's weird if he does this? What if his clothes seem boring to him? Markus's fashion choices are definitely not boring by anyone's standards: zips, and plenty of them; bold colours that would clash on anybody else; patterns and textures that don't belong to the same family but look no different than siblings on him. Markus is like a magnet. You can't help but be attracted to him, in the same way the moon is drawn to the Earth. In comparison, Connor's plain, bland, chameleon clothes must seem like the sartorial equivalent of a slow internet connection.

But why does he care? Why should it matter that Markus is a glorious peacock and Connor a pitiful, meek peahen cowering behind his tail-fan of feathers?

Sumo isn't tired yet. He can't distract himself by taking an unnecessary amount of care over something else.

But the grass next to his feet sure is fascinating!

A ball suddenly appears on that same grass, picking up a few strands on the viscous saliva. He's so glad they have the thrower. Connor would die for Sumo, but there's no way in any plane of existence that he would touch that atrocity.

The pitch sends the ball further than he'd intended, and it merrily sails into the hedge. Sumo doesn't seem bothered by this development, and from past experience will likely take an extra few minutes sniffing around the new world he's just discovered, so Connor checks the time on his phone and finds a new message from Markus. His heartbeat, unrelatedly, has picked up a few notches.

It's just one simple line:

 **New message from: Markus Manfred**

 **Is Sumo well? -Markus**

And the fact that Markus remembered what he said, and cared enough to go to the effort of sending him a message – even the most basic or default of pleasantries seems to have executed a successful prison break from his brain.

Impulsively he clicks on the camera icon next to the keyboard and aims the phone at the hedge just in time for Sumo's head to pop out, ball clamped firmly between dribbling chops. It's even more adorable (and comical, at the same time) than he'd planned it to be. He saves it, sends it, and then shares it with Hank as well.

The text notification chimes as he's throwing the ball again, Sumo shedding leaves and small segments of branches as he gallops after it. It's from Hank – or rather, they're from Hank.

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **idiot dog**

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **how's school?**

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **nothing happening at work. tina just set reeds desktop to a giant close up of a naked mole rat. hes coming off break in 5. should be good.**

 **Compose message to: Hank Anderson**

 **The usual. I got 100% on my Chem test.**

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **fuckin a**

Before he can start to reply – with what would probably be something along the lines of yes, _100% would be a fucking A_ – the phone chimes again and the drop-down box informs him that he has another new message from Markus. He stares at the phone dumbly for a few moments, starting when Sumo gets bored of waiting and shoves his full weight against Connor's side.

"Sorry, boy," he murmurs, scratching behind an ear to placate him, and chucks the ball again. Sumo trips over his own legs trying to get a running start, then acts as if nothing happened. But Connor knows. Connor saw.

He also opens the text from Markus with a strange apprehension settled low in his stomach. But, as it turns out, it's not actually Markus, it's North. Connor knows this because the text says:

 **New message from: Markus Manfred**

 **it's not actually Markus, it's North**

 **New message from: Markus Manfred**

 **sorry to disappoint**

 **New message from: Markus Manfred**

 **that is the cutest dog i have ever seen and i would happily die being suffocated by him**

North has, on more than a single occasion, expressed glee over Connor's deadpan humour. Therefore, she will understand and enjoy his response of:

 **Compose message to: Markus Manfred**

 **I have ways of making that happen. -Connor**

Hopefully she'll understand and enjoy it, anyway. Either she will laugh or call the police, but that would be fine too. He has connections in the force. Connection.

He stows his phone back in his pocket so he can focus on Sumo for the last few throws without having to think about emotions. His speed is starting to wane, even if his enthusiasm isn't following suit, and he's panting heavily, breaths audible even around the ball in his mouth. One more throw, and then they'll get going, Connor decides. If they head back too soon, Sumo will take his excess energy out on some poor undeserving furniture, but if he keeps pushing him, Sumo will just lie down and refuse to move for a few hours, forcing Connor to sit with him, or carry him home. This is a problem when the dog that needs to be carried is the same weight as approximately 136 basketballs.

Sumo whines pitifully when he sees the lead back in Connor's hands, but he still stands patiently and without protest as it's reattached. He drops the ball obediently but stares at it with a mournful gaze that could win an Oscar. Connor feels guilty, as he always does when he ends one of their walks, but on the way back home Sumo doesn't walk any faster than a staid plod, quelling that feeling easily. If they'd played for any longer, Sumo probably would have ended up with heat exhaustion because he's an idiot who doesn't know when to stop.

"You're an idiot who doesn't know when to stop," he tells Sumo, garnering a confused look from an elderly woman elbows-deep in her flower bed. Sometimes mystified elderly ladies are the price you pay for enlightenment. "Boundaries are important, Sumo. You should try setting some."

Sumo rolls his eyes back to fix Connor with an unnerving stare that's just a little bit too accusatory for Connor's liking. "I have plenty of boundaries," he informs his canine companion, in a tone that is perfectly neutral and not at all haughty or indignant. "My entire life is one giant boundary." Sumo snorts without missing a beat. Connor's not entirely sure what aspersions are being cast upon his character, but he knows that he certainly does not appreciate them.

Following another fierce battle with the front door – Connor adds 'replacing the lock' to his medium priority to-do list, right underneath 'painting the window-frames' and 'cleaning the grout in the shower before we're invaded by eager scientists who want to study the new forms of life evolving there' – and once Sumo has been stripped back down to his default nudity and his jacket is back on the coat rack, he goes to retrieve a glass of water for himself, and a carrot for Sumo. But just a few strides into the room, he stumbles to an unsteady pause, physically rooted to the spot by an overwhelming, consuming, awful, sinister swelling of dread.

Sumo, with all the grace and majesty of a drunken battering ram, slams into his legs and nearly Gilloolys him. He snuffles at his hands, discovers them to be devoid of carrots, and huffs with pointed exasperation.

"Just a minute," Connor snaps, suddenly cantankerous though he can't place exactly where that irritation has emerged from, or why. "The world doesn't revolve around you." Which is a blatant lie, at least half of Connor's decisions in life have Sumo at the heart of them.

The collision serves to free his legs, at least. The strange, unfounded trepidation is still sitting inside his heart like a malignant neoplasm, but he can force himself to close the short distance and retrieve Sumo's snack. The carrots are the only vegetable they have, he notices, they should really do something about that. Sumo's eyes are fixed on the carrot, and when Connor tosses it over to the living room Sumo dutifully follows at an inelegant gait. He settles down on the rug to chomp on it happily, probably spreading shreds everywhere so he'll have to vacuum later.

The carrot isn't the problem. The kitchen is the issue at hand. There is something just so, so, _so_ undeniably wrong with it, and if he doesn't solve whatever is causing that wrongness quickly, then the situation could rapidly get out of control.

A challenge in and of itself, however, is that he doesn't actually know what needs fixing. Nothing is screaming out at him that it's out of place or dirty or wrong. With no discernible root to the problem, a solution is making itself near impossible to ascertain.

Amidst the fog in his brain, there's a solution floating around there too, dinging off the sides like a DVD screensaver. But there's no logic behind it. It feels like every fibre of his being is urging him to _clean_ , of all things. To clean so thoroughly that the entire room is saturated with the smell of antiseptics and bleach, scrubbed in so viciously that Connor will be able to feel it in the very bones of the furniture when he walks in. The rationale lurking behind the answer refuses to reveal itself, and yet.

Yet.

If he doesn't clean – the very thought seems borderline sacrilegious. The notion of disobeying the impulse sends tendrils of dread creeping down his spine, invading his body with icy efficiency. He can't pinpoint what will happen, only that something will, and it will bring catastrophe in its wake. And it's not actually – it's not as strange as it sounds. The more he thinks about it, the more he realises that it _is_ logical. Kitchens have the potential to carry so many bacteria and grime and disease and it could all so easily transfer to their food and then into their bodies. It's logical, it's natural, it's _sensible_ that he wants to clean everything.

He could plan to do it when he's returned from school, but what if Sumo jumps up to grab what he thinks is a delicious treat off the counter and instead finds himself with a mouthful of plague?

Besides, Connor's never been especially adept at ignoring outstanding missions. If a job needs to be completed, then there is no point in waiting to complete it. He wouldn't be able to focus on anything if he went back to school; he might as well stay here and clean. It would be far more productive.

He glances over to Sumo, contentedly gnashing away at his midday snack. The kitchen might be hazardous, but the fridge itself – at least inside – should be sterile. Connor cleaned it last weekend. As long as Sumo stays in the living room, or at least out of the kitchen, he's not in danger.

He mentally compiles a list.

New task: Take the afternoon off school and thoroughly clean the kitchen.

Sub-task: Ring school and inform them of his absence.

Sub-task: Thoroughly clean the kitchen.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the kitchen counters.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the fridge.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the fridge door.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the cupboards.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the cupboard doors.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the sink.

Sub-sub-task: Dust the kitchen.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the microwave.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the oven.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the hob.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the floor.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the kitchen table.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the kitchen chairs.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the windows.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the windowsills.

Sub-sub-task: Empty the kitchen bin.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the dishwasher.

Sub-sub-task: Defrost and organise the freezer.

Sub-sub-task: Clean the freezer exterior.

The list is daunting but doable, especially in the face of Hank and Sumo's safety. The most troublesome of all is the phone call. Phone calls are not his forte. Speaking in person is hard enough, trying to formulate words and replies in the midst of scrutinizing the minutiae of someone's facial expressions, but he doesn't even have those scarce details when the conversation isn't face-to-face.

Sure, there's inflection and word choice and tone and all that jazz, but it's never as simple as it seems. People fake their emotions sometimes, or feel them differently to other people so they express them differently. A rule of thumb is contradicted just as many, if not more, times than it is followed.

Rule of thumb: when people are happy, they smile.

Contradictions: when people are sad, they smile in an attempt to make themselves happy. When people are societally expected to smile, they smile to follow etiquette. When people cry, their facial features contort and sometimes this makes them look like they are smiling.

So really nothing means anything, but the majority of the population seem to have developed an intuitive sixth sense that tells them everything they need to know to produce fluid, non-mortifying social interactions. It's like everyone has some kind of built-in interface to aid them; choices that pop up in their vision, little percentages next to them to signify chances of success. Maybe this mythical sixth sense is actually some kind of implanted chip that provides them with a helpful HUD. If so, Connor would like to request one, please and thank you, because as it is with just five senses, any kind of conversation or basic interpersonal contact transforms into a panicked nightmare of struggling to interpret and react within socially dictated 'polite' time restraints.

Be that as it may, the phone call is still a requirement. It's something of a predictable topic, though, so he can at least formulate some standard phrases and responses that he may have to use. That takes the anxiety down from maybe a nine out of ten to a solid eight point seven.

The house phone, which he'd prefer to use, is sitting on a small shelf just inside the living room – too risky. If he leaves the kitchen before it's cleaned, he could spread the dirt all over the house. His phone is in his jeans pocket – it's already contaminated and will need cleaning, so he'll have to call on that instead.

He knows the number already. He never forgets patterns, sequences – phone numbers are easy, because there's always some way to link the numbers together. He doesn't even intend to, it just happens and then it's ingrained in his mind like someone's taken a chisel to his skull. It's not good, or bad, it just…is. It's something.

It rings three times, and then is picked up before the fourth ring can start. Connor likes that, but he's not sure why.

"William McKinley High School, how can I help?" chirps the receptionist. There are only two at school who ever answer the phone, and they're distinctly different – one is young and upbeat, the other is nearing retirement and has a rasp in her voice that indicates regular smoking, so Connor felt fairly confident in saying,

"Ms. Lindbell? It's Connor Anderson."

"Oh, Connor!" she says immediately. She seems to like him ever since he offered to help her carry several boxes of overstuffed ring-binders to her car last year. "Is everything alright? Is _Hank_ alright?" She also learnt of Hank's profession at a parents' evening during polite small-talk and has spoken about how brave he is for doing such a dangerous job ever since in awed, reverent tones.

"Yes, it's all fine," he reassures, then amends, "but actually, I'm not feeling too well. I'm not sure what it is, but…"

"Oh dear!" Ms. Lindbell coos, and even with his limited social capabilities he can tell that her concern is genuine. "Oh, Connor, did you go home for lunch like usual?"

"Yes, I'm at home. I thought it would be best if I stayed here."

"Absolutely! Let me just pull up your timetable, sweetheart." She hums over the sounds of a mouse clicking and software whirring. "Only one lesson, and it's AP Latin with Mrs. Magnus."

"Yes, I can email her to sort out the work I need to catch up on," Connor offers. Even the idea of an email fills him with dread – what if he makes a typo and is laughed at forever? Should he sign off as 'sincerely' or just his name? Does he begin with 'dear' or 'hello'? – but falling behind with school is infinitely worse, like a pothole compared to a meteoric crater.

"No, no, I won't hear of it," Ms. Lindbell declares. "You just rest up and I'll take care of everything."

"Thank you, Ms. Lindbell." Connor makes a mental note to buy her a gift – some flowers, perhaps? He caught sight of a gardening encyclopaedia on her desk once, and he doesn't imagine that she gets a lot of appreciation for her behind-the-scenes work. "If it's not too much trouble."

"Not at all, Connor. Now you rest up, make sure you drink enough, and don't push yourself to come back until you're better, okay?"

"Okay, Ms. Lindbell."

"Good. See you soon, Connor."

"You too, Ms. Lindbell. Goodbye."

"Bye, Connor!"

He hangs up before he says it again and leads them into a rabbit hole of farewells, worries that it was rude to hang up at that specific moment, decides to stop worrying, then worries that his decision to stop worrying is a sign that he's a rude bitch.

"Why is life so hard," he laments to Sumo, who is much more interested in his carrot than Connor's feelings. He diverts his attention to texting Hank instead.

 **Compose message to: Hank Anderson**

 **I have a bad headache. I've taken the afternoon off school.**

It's nearly the truth. The reply comes in barely a minute later.

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **its all that death metal. rots your brain. dont know who got you into that. do you need me to come home?**

Hastily,

 **Compose message to: Hank Anderson**

 **No, I'm okay.**

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **do you want me to come home?**

If he says yes, Hank will be abandoning his work obligations just because Connor is feeling sub-optimal. If he says no, Hank might believe that Connor doesn't enjoy spending time with him. The truth is –

The truth is that Connor wants his dad.

But he can't ask Hank to forsake his job for what could simply be a bad episode of sensory overload. He texts back a middle ground.

 **Compose message to: Hank Anderson**

 **I'm looking forward to seeing you tonight, but I am not in so much pain that I require emotional or physical care.**

 **New message from: Hank Anderson**

 **if you say so. gavin fell off his chair btw.**

Connor decides not to foster any further disciplinary-warranting behaviour, and puts his phone back in the same pocket without responding. He should get on with the cleaning anyway.

The small cupboard under the sink is predictably musty; the only item in there that isn't both covered in dust and surrounded by a dubious border of brown... _something_ is the box of dishwasher tablets. A new sub-sub-task flitters onto the list: clean under the sink.

A soft padding behind him indicates that Sumo has finished his carrot and is coming to investigate the bottles and tubs that Connor's pulling onto the tiles beside him. "Bed," Connor calls, and the footsteps (pawsteps?) subside for a second before resuming. A barely audible thump as he settles down in his bed, and a sigh at being so cruelly ignored. "Good boy," he placates, examining a label that's faded so badly he can't figure out what the contents were for. He decides not to risk it, and puts it straight into the bin. Hank once investigated a 'death under mysterious circumstances', which transpired to be a woman who hadn't checked the labels on her cleaning products, inadvertently mixing together bleach and a toilet cleaner containing ammonia, and had then poisoned herself with the resulting chlorine gas.

Death by toilet cleaner. Best avoided when possible, Connor thinks.

He arranges the identifiable products on the draining board, alphabetically first, then by function, then back to alphabetical when he realises that a lot of cleaning products appear to have multiple functions and it's impossible to create overlapping Venn diagrams on a small draining board. The colours all clash with each other a little bit, but they're not out there for the aesthetic. Connor can deal, but he should probably look away before he gets the itch to rearrange them yet again.

Cupboards first. Easy enough. Under the sink first, scrub hard to get the stains off. Disinfect. Then the others. Take everything out and stack it in the sink to be cleaned later, wipe to get rid of the dirt and dust, thoroughly disinfect, disinfect again just to make sure, repeat.

Then the counters. Wipe, disinfect, bleach, disinfect.

Table and chairs. Wipe, disinfect, furniture polish. Make sure that all of the nooks and crannies have been reached, too; all down the legs, in every notch in the carved wooden backs, underneath the seats as well as the tops.

Back to the cupboards, while he has the furniture polish in his hand. Inside the doors, outside the doors, hinges and handles.

Connor usually turns on some kind of high-energy music when he cleans – admittedly, that only started because heavy metal was the only tactic he had left in his arsenal to get Hank even mildly bothered about housework, after 'the health department will conduct a raid here soon' and collecting all of Sumo's moulted hair together and balling it into a mass the size of Sumo himself failed. Over time, he came to enjoy the background noise, and discovered that it even helped him to concentrate more. Pure silence meant that every sound became a distraction, its noise amplified ten-fold with nothing to cover it. A pin dropping was like a cymbal clash. The spray bottle became a starting gun. It was torture.

But he can't bring himself to do anything that could take any of his attention away from the task at hand – any focus subverted could cause a fatal error. No music, no distractions; he needs to just get on with the rest of the room before he loses his stride and does something wrong.

They have five drawers. Three hold nothing but dust and dirt. Cleaning them takes a matter of minutes. Another holds cutlery in a plastic divider. He dumps the contents of that into the sink and gives the divider the same treatment as the drawer. The last drawer holds what Hank refers to as 'actual cooking shit'. Translated, this means wooden spoons, spatulas, and knives.

The sliding mechanism for the drawer isn't running smoothly. It takes a bit of jiggling (that's the technical term) to get it open, the implements inside shaking along with the drawer. The light catches a knife blade and reflects a jagged prism onto the wall.

A flood of images bursts into his mind, almost simultaneously: Sumo, blood pooled around him from an unspecified wound. Connor's own wrists sliced open in an overlapped mess of fierce cuts. Nameless people on the street, the genocide Connor has wreaked more of an idea than an image. Hank, grisly wound carved across his throat. Markus, North, Josh, Simon, faces slashed and disfigured. Blood wounds pain red red red all because of him

He slams the drawer shut. It's not that dirty, it can wait another day.

Onto the microwave. One cup of water and one cup of white vinegar in a microwave-safe bowl, put it on for three minutes, clean the exterior while it's going. _Ding._ Let it cool down for a few minutes, take the time to reset the clock (press random buttons until something works). Clean the inside; the steam from the mixture loosens the food stains, they wipe off easily, and then it can be disinfected.

The hob. Hank got a new one put in a couple of years back, replacing the gas burners (horrendous to clean) with an induction hob (easy to clean). Connor is grateful that the old one malfunctioned; not so grateful that it happened in the middle of the night and nearly asphyxiated them all.

His hands hurt. They don't have any of those yellow rubber gloves, not after Sumo somehow got one trapped over his snout last year. They had to take him to the vet after he panicked and ran headlong into the fridge, but Hank still good-humouredly recalls the memory of the five rubber fingers, sticking out from Sumo's face like a flag, engorging and deflating with the dog's breath. The several hundred-dollar bill seems to be a slightly less fond reminiscence.

It's not usually a problem, he only does deep cleans once a month on a revolving schedule of rooms, and direct contact with bleach is minimal, if at all. But he's been splashing it around pretty liberally this time _becausehehastobesureit'sclean_ , pouring it neat onto his cloth rather than diluting it like he might normally.

The skin on his palm is already an angry, raw scarlet and there are small fissures carved through the canyons between his knuckles, splitting into deltas to trickle down the backs of his hands. He likes it. They're clean, and the dry sore skin is just evidence of that.

Sumo whines in the background. "It's okay," Connor soothes, spinning on his heel. "Why don't you get a toy?" Sumo stares back flatly, _Why don't you go fuck yourself?_ "I can't come out, Sumo, not yet." Sumo huffs and rolls onto his side, but his eyes close and he drifts off to sleep soon afterwards.

The box of oven cleaner has instructions on the back. Empty one sachet of powder into one of the bags provided. Fill to the line with hot water. Put oven racks inside and seal, leave for thirty to thirty-five minutes. Use another sachet of powder in two litres of hot water to clean the interior of the oven. He can do that. He does do that.

Deep clean cycle for the dishwasher, using the last bottle of cleaner they have. They need to get some more, they should be doing this at least once a week. They eat off the things that are cleaned in here, God, how are they not dead already with how lax their hygiene is? Wipe down and disinfect the front of it, use the small scrubbing brush to get the dirt from around the buttons. Probably a breeding ground for bacteria. Yuck.

The freezer next. Defrosting will, from experience, take an hour. He should have gotten it started already, it was stupid not to, but it is what it is. He'll remember for next time.

They have next to nothing in there. It's just two shelves in a little box underneath the fridge, and all it holds is the remains of an ice cream tub (not even half a scoop) and an ice cube tray (no ice cubes inside). The tub goes into the bin, the tray into the sink. A small amount of ice has built up around the roof and the edges of the rack where they meet the sides. Connor lines the bottom with three dish-towels, turns the temperature dial to OFF, and leaves the door hanging open.

This is the worst part of cleaning: the middle stage, where everything is messier than it was before. Hank likes to use it as an excuse to forego cleaning, protesting that things just get worse than they were before. He conveniently goes temporarily deaf when Connor reminds him that's because he never actually finishes the job. Not an option here. He presses on.

No harm in cleaning the fridge again, right? Empty, wipe, disinfect, disinfect again. The shelves, the sides, the interior of the door. Disinfect the food packages too, put them back in but _organised_ this time. Ready meals here, drink cartons there, fruit on that shelf, beers on this shelf.

Better better better so much better.

Same treatment for the exterior door; wipe, disinfect, disinfect again. Greasy finger- and hand-prints are still visible over the silver-grey surface, but they stubbornly refuse to budge even with three separate cleaning products thrown at them. A challenge for another day, perhaps.

The windows are easy. It's one of the first things that he ever learnt to clean, it was one of his chores when he was younger. He doesn't remember much about his biological parents, but he has vague recollections of them being very concerned with appearances – the house was neat, the car was cleaned regularly, the driveway was weeded – probably because the reality behind the façade was so messy.

But it's fine, because he doesn't think about it.

Windows done, windowsills next. Also easy. Wipe, disinfect twice.

The racks from the oven have been in the bag for – check the clock on the wall – thirty-two minutes. The instructions recommend between thirty and thirty-five minutes. He takes them out, rinses them with the kitchen tap, and empties the solution in the bag down the sink with plenty of water as per the instructions. The racks are back in the oven, the oven is done, he can cross off a sub-sub-task. It feels like a white-hot stinging lash over his body, but good.

Cloying dust and cobwebs have gathered thickly where the wall meets the ceiling, and Connor clamps his mouth shut and holds his breath while he knocks them down with the yellow cloth, but he still feels like he's inhaling it. His lungs feel tight by the time he's finished, but he doesn't want to cough and ruin his work of the past – check the clock – two hours and forty-seven minutes.

Clean the sink, empty the kitchen bin, clean the floor. Three tasks left. His body is coated in a thin sheen of sweat, which is not ideal – sweat is a good medium for bacteria. But he has been thorough. Any sweat would have been wiped up along with everything else. Just make sure he doesn't drip on anything. Ugh. The human body is a hazard.

To clean the sink, he needs to clean the things in the sink. Which are also overflowing onto the counter next to the sink. He's nearly done so the cleaning supplies can go back into the cupboard underneath. Alphabetically, easier to find. But dishwasher tablets at the front, or Hank will notice he's been reorganising and cleaning.

The hot water and washing-up liquid smarts the tender skin on his hands as he methodically washes and stacks on the draining board. When it gets full, he dries them. It's as simple as that. A normal task that everybody does. Wash, stack, dry, put away. Refresh the water between washes and each time it's just a few degrees hotter. By accident.

The skin on his hands is beginning to crack. But it's not bleeding. So it's not bad.

Bleach in and around the sink, rinse the draining board, wipe and disinfect. Then rinse the bleach. He doesn't think the sink has ever been so bright. He likes it.

"Bleach every day, mayhaps," he says to Sumo, who remains asleep. Being ignored by his own dog doesn't sting, because that would be irrational and silly, and Connor is rational and sensible.

He takes the now-full bin bag outside to the general waste bin – it's nearly full itself, but collection is in three days – and replaces the bin liner. Sumo stirs as a gentle breeze comes through the open front door, but only snuffles as he rearranges himself in his bed and dozes off again.

They don't have a mop. They don't have a specific floor cleaner. But they have a multi-purpose cleaner, which includes tiles, and he has a cleaning cloth he hasn't used yet. The kitchen isn't huge, but it isn't tiny, either. It takes time to clean the floor using the cloth. But it's so _clean_ when it's done.

All sub-sub-tasks are completed.

That means all sub-tasks are completed.

That means all tasks are completed.

The kitchen is _clean_.

Connor is not. He needs a shower. After a few moments of contemplation, he strips down to his underwear in the kitchen, bundling the clothes together in his arms for the lowest possible chance of exposure.

"I'm going in the shower," he informs Sumo, who opens his eyes for less than a second to acknowledge his words. He's sulking at being ignored. Connor will have to pay extra attention to him after he's clean.

He pads to the bathroom, carefully staying close to the wall, but not close enough that his skin or his clothes touch it. He maps out the path as he goes, remembering where he stepped, where he might have spread anything. He nudges the ajar bathroom door with his elbow, and shoves the clothes into the washing machine.

While the shower runs, juddering as it heats the water, he sits on the edge of the bathtub, strangely drained. He feels like he's just been sprinting for hours, not cleaning a small room. He wants to sleep – after the shower. Shower, then vacuum the carpet where he walked, and the remnants of the carrot in the living, then nap on the sofa with Sumo.

The water is scalding when he steps in, just how Connor wanted it. Hot water is more effective at killing germs. He scrubs with the loofah at every part of his body he can reach until his skin is bright pink. His hands still hurt. The rest of his body hurts, too. It hurts like it's clean.

He reaches straight for his casual clothing drawer in his room, pulling out grey sweatpants and one of Hank's old shirts that he's inherited – Detroit Police Academy, it says, where Connor thinks he'd like to end up too. It's slightly too big for him; Hank has always been a touch broader in the shoulders, and a few inches taller. He adds a pair of socks – Sumo likes to lick bare feet, and he's trying not to feed that addiction – and retrieves the vacuum from the bathroom cupboard. The room is still full of steam. He can't see himself in the mirror.

Sumo gets excited when the vacuum cleaner appears – rather than being scared of it like most dogs are, he sees it as a noisy, intermittent friend. It turns the two-minute task into ten minutes, because the machine is clumsy anyway and even more so when Sumo is trying to pounce on it. But when he stows the vacuum back in the cupboard, containing any contamination with it, he feels profoundly more at peace.

Connor patters back out into the living room, closing the bathroom door behind him so Sumo isn't tempted to practice his bath-mat surfing, and flops bonelessly onto the sofa. There's a blanket thrown messily over the arm, and he manipulates it with his feet until it's covering his lower legs.

"Sumo, come up," he calls, patting his chest. Without hesitation, the dog jumps up to join him and flops down, paws thrown over Connor's shoulders and head nestled at the junction between Connor's neck and shoulder.

Sumo, blessed with the ability to fall asleep at any and all moments, nods off within a matter of seconds. Connor, even with his body aching like it's been put through a combine harvester, doesn't have the same blessing. He tangles his fingers in Sumo's fur and relaxes as best he can, eventually dozing off too.

* * *

I just want to have a little rant/explanation here. Connor, in this fic, as he is in many, is quite obviously portrayed as being on the autism spectrum. People on the autism spectrum are still people, and therefore are individual, and all act in different ways – we just share similar traits. A lot of how Connor acts is based on how my own thoughts and actions work. I am autistic, that's how my brain works – I can make jokes, I understand sarcasm, I can use metaphors, emotions are hard and I don't always understand them BUT I'm not a complete idiot about them either. Yeah, the world is harder to understand, but that doesn't mean that we don't understand it – or that we don't understand anything apart from Maths or Science, for that matter. Some of us enjoy creative writing too, for example!

A lot of people – and no shade to anybody in particular, please don't think I'm trying to start beef – who don't know/understand autism that well or have only ever seen it portrayed in popular culture all tend to write it the same way. Here's a character – he's autistic, so that is now his defining characteristic, and the main things I know about autism are that people take things literally and speak formally, so that is what this character will do.

And, again, no shade to anyone, but a quick message particularly to non-autistic people writing autistic people – it's really insulting when you make out that because we're autistic, we don't know stuff. We can't read faces as well, we don't always understand social etiquette (which is, btw, some made-up bullshit anyway?) and sometimes we take things literally, but that doesn't mean that we don't have senses of humour and can't understand jokes and that it's okay for you to infantilize us. It's also not okay to refuse to characterize someone other than "they're autistic". It's like creating a character with, say, Down's Syndrome, and not giving them a personality past that. It's just very frustrating and insulting to read people writing a character with your own condition and it's completely stereotyped and usually not accurate, and from a writer's perspective, downright lazy because you haven't done any research into it yourself.

Anyway, rant over. Sorry for being angry. I just wanted to get that off my chest.


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